James Kaminsky, the former Realtor.com® and current CoStar Group employee in the middle of a data-theft lawsuit between two real estate portal giants, Realtor.com (owned by Move, Inc.) and CoStar’s Homes.com, on July 25 provided his side of the story in a court filing, writing that while he did access documents and information from Move, it was for his personal use and record-keeping only.
In the formal declaration filed in the U.S. Central District Court in California, Kaminsky, a defendant along with CoStar, detailed precisely how he came to be accused of taking information from Move, what his intentions were, and why he should not be judged to have done anything wrong if and when the case proceeds to trial, as Move requests.
Kaminsky, who has been placed on paid leave by CoStar until the issues play out in court or are dismissed, went into great detail proclaiming there was no wrongdoing on his part, as well as explaining the personal circumstances that led him to decide to access and send Move documents to his personal email account once he was no longer employed there.
After working for Move for eight-plus years, “on January 10, 2024, I was informed that my position as Senior Director of Editorial for Realtor.com was being eliminated due to workforce reduction. I was surprised by the layoff. I did not know it was in the works. When the layoff occurred, I found myself completely unprepared to enter the job market. Being without a job is a daunting prospect for anyone, but it was especially so for me in light of my family situation. I am the sole provider for a family of four adults, including my wife and two adult children with special needs.”
In his final days with Move, Kaminsky wrote that he downloaded “financial, personal and medical information to the extent it resided on Move’s systems while I had access to it,” documents he claimed would be necessary for accounting purposes and to assist in his upcoming job search.
Move’s lawsuit claims Kaminsky bypassed its computer security system once no longer an employee, and accessed via his personal email account proprietary information that it believes would be of great value to CoStar. Kaminsky had been a Realtor.com editorial team leader, and Move said the information he took would greatly help Homes.com establish a similar team. Additionally, it asserted, Kaminsky returned his computer to the company only after he had deleted every file on it.
Not true, countered Kaminsky.
“I had many other personal files on my Move-issued computer,” he wrote. “Many were highly sensitive documents about services for my children, or medical assessments. I also had emails containing my credit card information. Before returning my laptop computer to Move, I did not have time to carefully prune the selection of emails that I wanted to delete for personal privacy purposes, so I erased the majority of my emails and electronic files to prevent them from being seen by the technology personnel who would be processing my computer return.
“To be clear, I think the act of deleting my personal files, emails and browser history is basic privacy hygiene, and I believe that other employees in my department who left Move over the years did the same. Move never indicated to me that it was a problem. I was also fully aware that if my emails or other work-related electronic documents were ever needed by Move for any business reason, they would still be saved on the company’s servers. I never had any intention of destroying evidence.”
Kaminsky admits that he did copy other Move documents, but said it was for the singular purpose of helping him build the resume and portfolio needed for a job search. He said he paid no attention to whether the documents might be considered proprietary, and had “no interest in saving them, sharing them, or using them for any reason beyond short-term help in generating job hunting materials for myself. I gave myself what I assumed would be temporary access to them in the most transparent and public way I know: literally putting my name on them.”
According to the lawsuit, documents that Kaminsky accessed after leaving his job included files that were updated regularly with content metrics and editorial strategy as well names, titles and salaries of Realtor.com employees.
“The fact that I could grant permission to my personal email address, not a Move.com email address, to access the documents suggested to me that the documents were and are not highly significant proprietary documents. Certainly, I did not expect that anyone at Move would be concerned by my access to these documents. The documents did not in my view contain highly sensitive materials.
“To be clear, I no longer have access to any of the four documents that, in its Motion for Preliminary Injunction, Move alleges contain trade secret information. I did not print the documents, save them externally or otherwise preserve them in my records. I have never shared the records with anyone at CoStar, or used them in any capacity in the course of my work for CoStar or in any way in competition with Move.”
Kaminsky found out that Move felt otherwise, as he is now having to have his own legal representation in the case, since he and CoStar have been named as separate defendants. He insists he has never shared the documents with CoStar—something that Realtor.com has never directly alleged in court—repeating it multiple times in his court statement.
“I have never used these documents in any capacity for my employment at CoStar,” he wrote. “I have never shared the documents or any of their contents with anyone at CoStar. I have never had a specific conversation with anyone at CoStar about any specific Move strategy. I have no use for any of these documents at CoStar, particularly in light of the fact that my job duties at CoStar are entirely different from my job duties at Move.
“Move’s (recent court filing) suggests that I could use its alleged trade secrets to compete unfairly with Move at my new job with CoStar, and Move has alleged in its Complaint that I was hired by CoStar to build a competing news organization at CoStar to drive traffic to the Homes.com website in the way I had done at Move. That is entirely untrue.
“Move asserts that I was hired by CoStar to build a competing news division. That could not be farther from the truth. My job at Move was to manage a department in which we identified, wrote and published news articles designed to draw traffic to the Realtor.com website regarding a wide range of economic and business issues relating to residential real estate, and more pop culture articles about celebrities and their homes.
“In contrast, at CoStar, my job is not news or Internet traffic based at all. Instead, my job is to tell the story of high-end condominium and co-op buildings in New York City (primarily Manhattan) by managing a team of style and architecture writers who research and write descriptions about them one-by-one. The scope and subject of the writings is narrow and clearly defined: the history, architectural detail, and lifestyle within New York City condominium and co-op buildings.
“Nothing in the documents I had access to from Move assisted in that work. In fact, at Realtor.com, I never did any work at all on the listing portion of the website. I am not a member of senior management at CoStar and have no responsibilities for the strategic direction of CoStar.”
Later on July 25, Judge George H. Hu issued a notice partially granting a recent request by CoStar related to scheduling and discovery. The Court will consider recent motions and arguments on July 29.
This is a developing story. Stay tuned to RISMedia for further updates.
