Toronto Real Estate Board sues listings website Mongohouse for $2.1M

The Toronto Real Estate Board is suing skill listings website Mongohouse for $2 million, alleging that a anonymously-run page is illegally accessing, duplicating and distributing exclusive data.

The board, that is a largest in Canada and represents some-more than 50,000 realtors opposite a Greater Toronto Area, filed a lawsuit final month in Federal Court seeking for an evident and permanent explain for a renouned website to be taken down.

In a matter of claim, TREB alleges that Mongohouse participates in an “orchestrated plan to equivocate and elude” a board’s mixed attempts over a past dual years to close it down.

It claims a website is infringing on a board’s copyrights by “employing several techniques to illegally information scrape” information that it provides to a fee-paying members by a inner multiple-listings use (MLS). This includes information such as new skill listings, descriptions, sole prices and photography.

It goes on to lay that Mongohouse is profiting from advertisers by a daily “unauthorized access” of this information, that it afterwards displays on a website for free.

The house pronounced Thursday it could not criticism serve on a authorised movement given a emanate was now before a courts.

Meanwhile, efforts to hit Mongohouse were unsuccessful. A matter of explain has not nonetheless been filed with a Federal Court.

TREB cites discerning turnaround of data

In a filing antiquated Sept. 12, TREB says it doesn’t know how a information is being accessed, though it believes it is a source given it placed “unique information” in a complement and saw it seem on a Mongohouse website within 24 to 48 hours.

“All of a information on a Mongohouse website for this purpose is usually permitted from a TREB MLS system,” pronounced a claim. “There is no other means permitted for Mongohouse to obtain a information that is permitted and done publicly permitted by a Mongohouse website.”

The house argues that it has spent “tens of millions” of dollars to emanate and say a MLS complement and that it suffers “injury and lost harm” when Mongohouse “continues to pass itself off as charity a same services…”

In serve to fixing Mongohouse.com and Mongohouse.ca in a lawsuit, a explain also names a website’s different operators (John and Jane Doe); web server Digital Ocean Canada Inc. and a U.S. formed subsidiaries, as good as Sheng Lan Mai who is also famous as Maxim Mai, of Richmond Hill, Ont.

The house claims that Mai is a program operative during IBM and “appears to be a strange author and creator of Mongohouse.” It is misleading either he is now a user of a website.

The lawsuit is seeking that a justice sequence all information associated to a operations of Mongohouse be incited over, including financial exchange and communications.

TREB is claiming $2 million in indemnification and an additional $100,000 for copyright infringement, as good as authorised costs.

The justice papers fact a elaborate efforts by TREB to take down Mongohouse given it became wakeful of a existence in Sep 2016.

50K registered users

The Mongohouse website, that has a reported 50,000 purebred users, uses a map duty to arrangement new listings and sole prices opposite a Greater Toronto Area. It also provides skill photos and descriptions of listings. Users had to record into with passwords to entrance a information.

The website has been offline given Oct. 1.

“MongoHouse.com is taken until serve notice. At a moment, Mongohouse is incompetent to criticism and/or share some-more information until serve instructions given,” pronounced a message.

In August, a Supreme Court of Canada announced it would not hear a box where TREB was fighting to forestall home sales information from being posted on realtors’ password-protected websites.

TREB had argued for 7 years during 3 legal bodies that permitting a information to be expelled would emanate remoteness and copyright concerns, though a Competition Bureau insisted gripping a numbers underneath wraps was anti-competitive and mutilated innovation.

Since then, a handful of realty brokerages have done sales cost information permitted on their websites.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/treb-mongohouse-house-prices-listing-lawsuit-1.4851733?cmp=rss