<article>A Singapore court on Friday ruled that realty portal <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/99-co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">99.co</a> had partially breached a settlement agreement it had earlier reached with rival <a style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/propertyguru/">PropertyGuru</a>. </article>

A Singapore court on Friday ruled that realty portal <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/99-co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">99.co</a> had partially breached a settlement agreement it had earlier reached with rival <a style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/propertyguru/">PropertyGuru</a>. 
The settlement agreement, which was entered into by both parties in September 2015, aimed to resolve the issue of 99.co reproducing listings scraped from PropertyGuru&#8217;s website.
In a 49-page ruling this week, Justice Hoo Sheau Peng allowed the claim by PropertyGuru for &#8220;breach of settlement agreement in part, in that the defendant (99.co) is liable for the breach of cl2.1 (a) of the settlement agreement by substantially reproducing one listing with the nine photographs from the PG website to the 99 website.&#8221;
Peng asked 99.co to desist from cross-posting from PropertyGuru&#8217;s website and said that the latter could proceed with assessing damages caused due to the breach of contract.
Jani Rautiainen, Executive Director &amp; Co-founder, PropertyGuru, said, &#8220;Today’s verdict sends a strong message about fair-play &amp; good business ethics.There are no shortcuts to success. If a business takes an unfair shortcut and breaks the rules, it should be held to account for it. The defendant broke the rules and we are happy that the court today has validated that. The defendant must stop reproducing our listings.&#8221;
However, the court sided with 99.co with regard to PropertyGuru&#8217;s two other allegations &#8211; inducing property agents to breach the latter&#8217;s terms of use and acceptable use policy, and infringing copyright by reproducing images from its website.
In a <a style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.99.co/blog/singapore/victory-for-the-internet/">blog post</a>, Darius Cheung, founder and CEO of 99.co, hailed the verdict as a victory for the internet and for content creators.
&#8220;If you were to upload a photo to Facebook or Instagram or eBay &#8211; these sites do not and should not automatically get the rights on your photo simply by adding watermarks or basic modification &#8211; and that the rights to the photo ultimately still belongs to the user. Otherwise, all hell breaks loose and the rights to the photos posted on the internet (inadvertently via a platform), would belong to the platform who claims them as their own and use them however they please,&#8221; he wrote.
Having started a decade ago, PropertyGuru currently operates in five markets — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. In 2012, the real estate platform secured a $47-million investment from ImmobilienScout24, one of the largest telcos in Germany, marking the biggest funding by a telecom firm in a real estate website in Asia. Later in 2015, it closed a $125 million funding round from Australia-based Square Peg Capital, private equity major TPG and Emtek Group.
Meanwhile, 99.co is a relatively new company that was launched in Singapore in 2015 and expanded to Indonesia in 2016 and has been offering property listings, data science products and agents tools, among other products, in Southeast Asia’s largest market. Early this year, it had acquired UrbanIndo.com, one of the largest real estate platforms in Indonesia, for an undisclosed sum.
Also Read:
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<a style="color: #ff0000;" href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/99-co-acquires-indonesian-real-estate-platform-urbanindo-90770/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Singapore’s 99.co acquires Indonesian real estate platform UrbanIndo</a>
<a style="color: #ff0000;" href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/hari-krishnan-propertyguru-asiapevcsummit-2017-82763/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DSA Summit: PropertyGuru open to more investment, IPO up in air</a>
(Editor&#8217;s note: This article was updated on March 9 to reflect the judgement in its entirety. A previous version of the article had erroneously claimed that the Singapore court had ruled in favour of PropertyGuru, referring only to the breach of settlement agreement aspect of the lawsuit.)

The court asked 99.co to desist from cross-posting from PropertyGuru's site, asking the latter to proceed with assessing damages due to breach of contract. 

Singapore court finds 99.co in partial breach of agreement with PropertyGuru

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Singapore court finds 99.co in partial breach of agreement with PropertyGuru

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