PropertyGuru is taking 99.co to court over copyright infringement and more

Image credit: Wikimedia.

PropertyGuru, Singapore’s largest property classifieds portal in terms of traffic, is suing rival startup 99.co over reproducing content from its website, according to court documents obtained by Tech in Asia.

The next hearing will be held on September 20 in the Singapore Supreme Court.

“In April 2016, we filed a writ of summons against 99.co. The case has been heard in the court since then,” says a PropertyGuru spokesperson. A writ of summons is a court document for starting civil legal proceedings in Singapore.

PropertyGuru claims there are three causes of action:

1. 99.co breached a settlement agreement that both parties entered into on September 2015.
2. 99.co induced property agents on PropertyGuru to breach its terms of use.
3. 99.co violated PropertyGuru’s copyright by reproducing photos with the latter’s watermark.

At the center of these three claims is Xpressor, a third-party app which property agents have been using to cross-post property listings from PropertyGuru to 99.co.

99.co is contesting all three accusations, and counterclaiming that PropertyGuru is making groundless threats.

In its defense, 99.co argues that:

1. End users (the property agents) were the ones who reproduced the content that allegedly belongs to PropertyGuru.
2. It was unaware of PropertyGuru’s terms of use for property agents, and therefore lacked the knowledge and intention to induce PropertyGuru’s users to violate its policies.
3. Property agents are merely exercising their own copyright by cross-posting content from PropertyGuru to 99.co using a third-party software.

The case follows intensifying competition between the two for Singapore’s property market.

Earlier in September, over 1,000 property agents banded together to protest PropertyGuru’s price hikes on new packages, which allow agents to advertise their properties on the website. They’ve formed a group called Agents United, and one of its goals is to list more properties on 99.co.

PropertyGuru has over 15,000 agents subscribing to its packages. 99.co has about 6,000.

Traffic for PropertyGuru’s Singapore site was at 1.9 million visits in August, estimates SimilarWeb. That’s down from a high of 2.15 million in April 2017.