An analytics platform has been engaged in Federal Court proceedings following claims of “systematic and wholesale” hacking of more than 159,000 project reports from a rival’s data.
Real estate analytics company Cotality has been accused of systematically stealing a competitor’s data and packaging it as its own, a Sydney Federal Court heard on Monday.
The case is expected to last four weeks, following five years of legal preparation by Hubexo.
In claims to the court, Hubexo, which was trading as BCI Central at the time, alleged that between 2016 and 2020, Cotality, trading as CoreLogic, had created puppet accounts on its LeadManager platform to harvest information and pass it to sales staff.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported that Cotality did not refute the claims in court but instead questioned whether the actions had caused any commercial loss.
Hubexo lead barrister John Hennessy told the court that it was “widely known” among senior CoreLogic staff that they were exporting his client’s data, claiming that over almost 160,000 project reports were exported to CoreLogic-linked accounts from January 2018.
“In other words, systematic and wholesale extraction of BCI’s data from LeadManager, ultimately stored on RP Data’s server to do what it wanted with it,” Hennessey said.
“There was general knowledge in the business that this activity was being engaged in, right up to the top. It wasn’t the efforts of a few rogue employees.”
In court, Hennessey shared internal emails in which Cotality staff discussed how the data was obtained.
In March 2016, one executive wrote: “It’s best if we get national access without them knowing it is us, obviously!”
Once Hubexo discovered the accounts were associated with CoreLogic, they were shut down, prompting an “Oh bummer, we should have been more careful,” from another CoreLogic employee.
The AFR reported that a CoreLogic spokeswoman downplayed the scale and significance of the practice, saying it was wrong to describe it as hacking.
“The central issue before the court is whether BCI has suffered any loss. CoreLogic disputes that it caused any material loss or damage to BCI,” she said.
Hennessey said that it was “absolutely plain the respondents knew what was going on,” and said it was unusual that the executives had declined to testify.
In response, Cotality’s lead barrister Mark Martin said he had objections to the way the conduct had been criticised.
“We’ve admitted the conduct. People don’t have to explain things. This has gone beyond the pleaded case,” Martin said.
A CoreLogic spokesperson told REB that “the proceedings relate to historical internal benchmarking practices that occurred more than 10 years ago within a limited and specific segment of the business.”
“As the matter is currently before the Federal Court, CoreLogic will not comment further.”
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