The Incumbent
How the dominant CRE data platform controls the market — and why 1MLX is structurally immune to the same playbook.
The Playbook
One company dominates commercial real estate data in the United States. It controls an estimated 90% of the commercial listing market, 90% of the information market, and 95% of auction services. It has filed more than 30 federal copyright lawsuits since its founding in 1986. It has spent tens of millions of dollars on litigation in a single year. Industry observers have described its competitive strategy as "search and destroy."
That strategy operates on three interlocking mechanisms: contractual lock-in, technological barriers, and litigation as a weapon. Understanding how they work together is essential to understanding why 1MLX was designed the way it was.
Contractual Lock-In
When brokers upload listing photos and data to the dominant platform, they technically retain ownership. But the platform's terms grant it a perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, modify, distribute, and create derivative works from that content. In practice, brokers hand over broad commercial rights the moment they hit "submit."
The contracts go further. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the platform imposes terms that function as de facto exclusive agreements — if you provide data to this platform, you effectively cannot provide it to a competitor. These aren't formal exclusivity clauses. They're structured so that the practical effect is the same: brokers who want access to the dominant marketplace must keep their data off competing platforms.
This arrangement is now under federal antitrust scrutiny. In January 2024, the FTC filed an amicus brief arguing that the lower court made fundamental legal errors in dismissing antitrust claims against these practices. The FTC confirmed it is actively investigating.
Technological Barriers
Contracts alone don't close the market. The dominant platform also deployed technological tools — including a product that hosts broker websites — that prevent brokers from posting the same listings on competing platforms, even when the underlying content belongs to the broker. The Ninth Circuit found that these tools "impede competitors' ability to access brokers' listing information that is otherwise available to the public on brokers' own websites."
The effect is a closed loop: brokers' data goes in, but it doesn't come out. Competitors can't access it. Brokers can't easily move it. And the platform's market position becomes self-reinforcing.
Litigation as a Weapon
When contracts and technology aren't enough, the lawsuits begin. The pattern is well documented:
First copyright infringement lawsuit filed against LoopNet, then its largest competitor. After a decade of legal warfare, LoopNet's board sold the company to the dominant platform for $860 million in 2012.
The FTC required the combined company to spin off part of LoopNet's business into a new competitor, Xceligent, as a condition of the acquisition.
RealMassive, a Texas-based commercial listing platform, sued for copyright infringement. Settled for $1 million.
Xceligent — the very competitor the FTC had forced into existence — sued for "industrial-scale" copyright infringement. Xceligent filed for bankruptcy in December 2017. A $500 million judgment was entered against its estate.
With Xceligent gone, the average monthly price charged to new broker customers jumped approximately 80% — from $255 per broker to $466 per broker within seven months of the bankruptcy filing.
CREXi, a fast-growing commercial marketplace, sued for copyright infringement involving more than 46,000 images. CREXi filed antitrust counterclaims.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that CREXi "plausibly" alleged Sherman Antitrust Act violations, reviving the antitrust case. The same year, Zillow was sued over 53,000+ copyrighted photos. The Matterport acquisition ($1.6 billion) drew a second FTC request.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, leaving the antitrust claims intact and clearing the path for trial.
The pattern is consistent: file copyright claims, impose financial pressure through litigation, and either acquire the weakened competitor or drive it out of business. Then raise prices.
Why 1MLX Is Not a Target
Every successful legal action in the timeline above has one thing in common: the defendant used the incumbent's data. They scraped its photos, copied its listings, or redistributed content they had no right to use. That is the single thread that runs through 30+ lawsuits and three decades of litigation.
1MLX does not touch the incumbent's data. Not one photograph. Not one listing record. Not one data field. The platform is built from the ground up on original content:
Original photography. The Buildings database will be created through a dedicated professional photography program funded by a $3M line of credit — the majority of which pays for original photography nationwide. Every image is commissioned, owned, and copyrighted by 1MLXLLC. There is nothing to infringe because nothing is sourced from any existing platform.
Original listing data. All listing content is submitted directly by the founding members and subscribers from their own inventory. The data originates with the broker. It is not scraped, syndicated, or reverse-engineered from any competitor's database.
Original market intelligence. The news pipeline aggregates published reporting from CoStar News, Bisnow, Commercial Observer, The Real Deal, and other industry sources — standard news aggregation that is protected under established fair use principles. No proprietary database content is accessed or reproduced.
No perpetual license over member content. Unlike the incumbent's terms of service, 1MLX does not take a perpetual, irrevocable license to member-submitted content. The intellectual property created on the platform — the buildings database, the photography, the analytics layer — is owned by 1MLXLLC, which is under the permanent control of the founding group. Members retain full rights to their own submissions.
The Structural Difference
The Legal Exposure That Doesn't Exist
A reasonable question: could the incumbent sue 1MLX simply for entering the market?
In theory, anyone can file a lawsuit. In practice, the incumbent's entire litigation history rests on copyright infringement — the unauthorized use of its photographs, data, and proprietary content. Without that factual basis, there is no claim. A copyright suit requires proof that the defendant copied the plaintiff's original work. When every photograph is independently commissioned, every listing is submitted directly by brokers from their own inventory, and every data structure is built from scratch, there is nothing to copy and therefore nothing to claim.
An antitrust claim against 1MLX would fare no better. 1MLX is a new entrant with zero market share, owned by ten brokerage firms who are free to participate in any marketplace they choose. There is no exclusivity, no lock-in, and no barrier to any broker continuing to use any other platform. A monopolist suing a startup cooperative for entering the market while the monopolist itself is under federal antitrust investigation would be, at minimum, a difficult argument to make to a judge.
Tortious interference — the claim that 1MLX is improperly disrupting the incumbent's business relationships — requires proof of improper conduct. Building a competing platform with original content and inviting brokers to participate voluntarily is not improper conduct. It is competition.
What About Your Existing Contracts?
This is the practical question every founding member should ask: If my firm has a contract with the incumbent that restricts where I can send my listing data, does that prevent me from participating in 1MLX?
The answer requires understanding what those contract restrictions actually cover. The incumbent's terms grant it a perpetual license over content submitted to its platform — the specific photos, descriptions, and data files you upload to their system. Those terms also include provisions that the Ninth Circuit has characterized as de facto exclusives, restricting brokers from providing that same data to a competitor.
But there is a fundamental distinction between the data you submitted to the incumbent and the underlying business reality that you have space available. Your firm's inventory is your firm's inventory. A broker with 50,000 square feet available at 300 Park Avenue owns that fact. It is not the incumbent's intellectual property. The restriction is over the specific content uploaded to their platform — not over your right to market your own availabilities through other channels, any more than it prevents you from putting a sign in the lobby or sending a blast email.
What 1MLX receives is original content: fresh listing submissions from your own inventory, your own photos (or photography independently commissioned by 1MLXLLC), your own descriptions. None of it is sourced from, copied from, or routed through the incumbent's platform. A broker creating a new listing on 1MLX with original materials is not breaching a contract with the incumbent. They are marketing their own space on a platform they co-own.
There is a second and arguably more important point. The de facto exclusive provisions themselves are now under federal antitrust scrutiny. The Ninth Circuit found it plausible that these restrictions violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. The FTC has confirmed it is actively investigating. A tortious interference claim built on contract terms that may themselves be illegal restraints of trade is not a strong legal position. Courts are generally unwilling to enforce anticompetitive contract provisions through tort law.
Could the incumbent send threatening letters? It could. Threatening letters are inexpensive to send. But there is a wide gap between a letter and a viable claim. And a monopolist threatening brokerage firms for participating in a cooperative platform — while that monopolist is simultaneously defending itself against federal antitrust claims for the very contract provisions it would need to enforce — creates a set of facts that no litigator would welcome in front of a judge.
Every founding member should have their own counsel review their existing agreements before participating. 1MLX was designed so that this review leads to a clear answer: submitting original content about your own inventory to a platform you co-own does not breach a contract with anyone.
The incumbent's power depends on controlling your data. 1MLX was designed so that the founding members control their own. That is the structural difference — and it is the reason the incumbent's playbook does not apply here.