Move v. In the case of CoStar, the employee is alleged to have caused 5 thousand dollars in damages
After two claims against him It was late October when the parent company returned. Tuesday, Move Inc. filed a second amendment complaint in the ongoing battle with parent company.
Like the first amended complaint, the second contains six claims against CoStar. In the latest filing, Move seeks to close loopholes in two lawsuits dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge George H. Wu in Los Angeles.
Plaintiffs' two statutory federal and state trade secret claims, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Comprehensive Computer Information Access and Fraud Act, were dismissed. Both lawsuits targeted CoStar and a former Realtor.com employee at the center of the legal battle.
The suit, originally filed by Move in July, is about Kaminsky, a former Realtor.com employee who went to work at CoStar-backed Homes.com after being fired by the Move subsidiary. In the lawsuit, Move alleges that Kaminsky stole documents and trade secrets from Realtor.com, which he then provided to CoStar to power Homes.com.
In its amended complaint, Move alleged that it “incurred more than $5,000 in costs as a result of Mr. Kaminski's unauthorized access to Move's protected computer systems.”
“The breach of Move's internal systems has had a devastating and economic impact on the company, its employees and its business,” the filing states. “From the first day that Mr. Kaminski's unauthorized digital presence in Move's confidential business documents was discovered, Move employees, including some senior and executive positions, have had to dedicate a portion of their work hours to resolving, investigating, and remediating this security breach. The investigation distracted those employees from their normal business activities.”
Move also noted that it has retained forensics to investigate the extent of Kaminski's access to the documents and to assess any harm it may have caused. Move said that a forensic expert determined that Kaminski had deleted about a thousand electronic files from the Move laptop and had irretrievably destroyed those files and data by erasing the entire browsing history.
Move also noted that while CoStar insists Kaminski has done nothing wrong, CoStar has so far “refused to produce to the move court images Mr. Kaminski made from CoStar-issued computing devices. when he unlawfully accessed Move's confidential and trade secret information.”
Two of the other four claims in the filing are aimed at CoStar and Kaminsky and deal with allegations of trade secret misappropriation. The other two claims were directed solely at Kaminski and related to breach of contract and promissory note forgery.
In an emailed statement, a Realtor.com spokesperson said the company looks forward to its day in court.
“We have amended our complaint as directed by the judge and are now pursuing all six of our original claims,” the spokesperson wrote.
For its part, CoStar and its general counsel, Gene Boxer, still maintain that the suit is “”.
“The court has already dismissed Move's claims once and denied Move's request for an injunction. “Move's amended complaint does not address the underlying issues in its case and is another transparent attempt to criticize Homes.com, which has outcompeted Move's website in the marketplace,” Boxer wrote in an email.
“Agents love Homes.com and its 'your listing, lead' model. Realtor.com's approach to referrals is bad for agents and bad for consumers. Move should focus on fixing its broken business model and spend its legal fees defending a class-action lawsuit accusing Realtor.com of selling fraudulent mortgages to brokers.
