Real estate property search portal Trulia can continue providing automated property valuations to website visitors while a Patent and Trademark Office appeals board considers Trulia’s claim that a 2011 patent held by Zillow is invalid.
U.S. Patent 7,970,674 describes Zillow’s process for using information supplied by homeowners and real estate professionals to refine Zillow’s automatic home valuations, called “Zestimates.”
Zillow sued Trulia last year, and so far the sides have traded 128,744 pages of documents in the discovery phase of the suit, Peter Zollman writes in a blog post on the Advanced Interactive Media Group LLC (AIM Group) website. This month a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle stayed the case pending a decision on Trulia’s patent challenge. Source: aimgroup.com
