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A number of days after Transfer and CoStar Group’s newest filings, former Realtor.com editor James Kaminsky’s counsel filed a brand new assertion outlining Kaminsky’s recollection of occasions and stating his assist of CoStar’s request for expedited discovery.
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“I have not engaged in any work at CoStar that competes with Move’s News & Insights group, nor have I assisted anyone at CoStar in doing so,” the submitting learn. “I am currently on administrative leave. I have no access to CoStar’s computer system and am doing no work for CoStar other than assisting with the response to Move’s lawsuit.”
Within the 36-page declaration of assist, Kaminsky detailed his “surprise” layoff from Transfer, his makes an attempt to delete “financial, personal and medical information” from Transfer-owned gadgets and electronic mail accounts earlier than returning them to the corporate, and the rationale for accessing paperwork Transfer stated included commerce secrets and techniques. The previous editor additionally defined his resolution to work for CoStar Group, saying it was a great alternative in an “extremely tight” media job market.
“My new job at CoStar is entirely different from my prior job at Move. I readily disclosed my new job and its responsibilities to several people at Move; I was proud of it,” the submitting learn. “I never imagined that Move would have any issue with it at all and certainly never tried to hide it from Move.”
“Given all of the Move personnel who I met with and described my new role, I am shocked and surprised that Move informed the Court and claimed in the press that I am engaged in an effort to build a news department at CoStar to rival the News & Insights department I ran at Move,” it continued. “It is again simply not true.”
Kaminsky stated Transfer notified him of the layoff on Jan. 10, noting that his final day with the corporate could be Jan. 12. In these two days, Kaminsky stated he started downloading private info from Transfer-owned gadgets, together with his 2023 pay stubs, previous W-2s and bank card info. He additionally downloaded current efficiency evaluations, Christmas reward playing cards from colleagues, photos of his new dwelling and medical info for his two kids, each of whom have particular wants.
After securing his private info, Kaminsky stated he realized he wanted to “remember the high points” of his 8.5-year profession at Realtor.com, so he added his private electronic mail handle to a number of Information & Insights Google paperwork in anticipation that Transfer would shutter his work electronic mail handle.
“There was nothing secretive here: I gave myself access by inviting myself to them with my named email, [redacted]” the submitting learn. “In my experience at the company, we would not infrequently see names appear on documents that we did not expect to be there – we would just remove them. It was not a very secure system.”
“The fact that I could grant permission to my personal email address [redacted], not a Move.com email address, to access the documents suggested to me that the documents were and are not highly significant proprietary documents,” it added. “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.”
Kaminsky stated the recordsdata on the heart of Transfer’s theft of commerce secrets and techniques declare included sheets he created outlining his workforce’s wage and bonuses, an ongoing listing of Realtor.com Information & Insights tales, a “2022 or 2023” presentation on viewers and income projections, and two different recordsdata with passwords to third-party subscriptions, WordPress directions, and employees contact numbers.
Kaminsky stated he “briefly viewed” the doc with wage info to assist him calculate an applicable asking wage throughout his job search and clicked the doc with viewers and income projections, not understanding what it contained. Nonetheless, after wanting, he stated it contained an viewers presentation that “[jogged] his memory” about earlier work accomplishments. He stated he accessed each of these recordsdata earlier than beginning his place with CoStar on March 11.
The subsequent time he accessed a Transfer-owned file was on Might 31, when he wanted assist calculating the right tax withholding for his CoStar paychecks. In the course of the seek for previous paystubs within the emails he’d forwarded himself from his Transfer electronic mail account, he got here throughout emails notifying him of the Transfer-owned paperwork to which he added his private handle and opened them.
“I recall being surprised that I still had access to the documents and that the links were still active,” the submitting learn. “I clicked through the documents to see what they were and to satisfy some basic curiosity. None of the documents were relevant to my work at CoStar.”
Kaminsky stated he quickly clicked via among the paperwork, noting that just a few had been a whole lot of pages lengthy. Though he accessed these paperwork, Kaminsky stated he by no means used them for his work at CoStar or shared them with CoStar colleagues or management, as his job with CoStar focuses on managing a workforce that writes itemizing descriptions for high-end condominium and co-op buildings in NYC.
“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,” the submitting learn. “The writings are connected on the website to listings relating to those buildings; it is not a stand-alone feature designed to drive traffic to the website.”
“To my knowledge, CoStar does not track traffic at this time to this portion of Homes.com,” it continued. “I have never seen any statistics about audience traffic, and I have never been asked to focus on growing Internet traffic.”
Kaminsky stated he accessed one remaining doc on June 9, the day Transfer stated it grew to become conscious of Kaminsky’s actions. That doc, he stated, was titled, “News & Insights content decks.” The hyperlink, and several other others, was lifeless, he stated.
“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,” the submitting learn. “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.”
“To establish that I have no access to any of the documents Move alleges contain trade secrets, I have already provided my work and personal computers and electronic devices to a forensic examiner who I understand CoStar and my counsel retained for the purpose of establishing the facts relating to the Complaint and the Motion for Preliminary Injunction and supporting our defense against the baseless claims Move has asserted against CoStar and me,” it added.
CoStar has put Kaminsky on administrative go away because the Virginia-based firm battles Transfer over its July 23 ex-parte request (i.e., the expedition of an order with out giving the opposite celebration time to oppose) for an Order of Safety stopping the disclosure of confidential and commerce secret info in the course of the discovery course of. Particularly delicate paperwork, Transfer stated, ought to solely be obtainable to Transfer’s counsel and CoStar Group’s outdoors counsel.
CoStar answered again by requesting expedited discovery and the rescheduling of the preliminary injunction listening to from Aug. 15 to Sept. 19. In its submitting, CoStar’s counsel stated the expedited discovery would permit each events to entry unredacted variations of earlier filings and accompanying reveals so both sides can submit a “more fulsome briefing” forward of the preliminary injunction listening to.
CoStar management, together with Common Counsel Gene Boxer, has framed Transfer’s lawsuit as a “PR stunt” within the midst of an intensifying battle over web site site visitors efficiency. In the meantime, Realtor.com has been reserved in its commentary over the go well with, with a spokesperson saying the corporate doesn’t file lawsuits “frivolously” and can “litigate in the courts, not the media.”
A decide reviewed Transfer and CoStar’s ex-parte requests on Monday. A ruling is predicted quickly.
Learn Kaminsky’s assertion under:
