Founded in 2004, Redfin was an early pioneer in using online tools to find and buy homes. And now the company has the patents to prove it.
More than a decade after submitting the initial applications, the Seattle-based company has been quietly winning patents in areas of technology that have since become fundamental parts of the most popular real estate sites and apps.
A patent granted to Redfin in December, for example, covers the concept of displaying real estate information — such as homes for sale, schools and parks — on an aerial satellite image of a geographic region. Another patent, granted in August, describes an “online marketplace for real estate transactions” in which users can search for a home on an aerial image and then connect with a real estate agent or other service provider to schedule a tour or make an offer.
A patent issued September 2014, meanwhile, describes a system that identifies real estate agents in the geographic areas where the user is searching online.
The question of whether the patent claims cover the specific approaches used by other companies could no doubt keep squadrons of lawyers busy for months.
Redfin declined to comment this week on its plans for the patents. We’ve also contacted representatives of Zillow and Realtor.com for comment.
If nothing else, it’s a testament to the way the patent system struggles to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology. Inventors listed on the patents include Redfin co-founders David Eraker and Michael Dougherty, who have both long since left the company. The original applications were filed so long ago that some of the figures are shown in what appears to be Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows 2000.
And one of the patents presents the underlying problem in these terms: “The typical homebuyer finds information about real estate properties by hiring a real estate agent, by driving through neighborhoods in which the homebuyer would like to live, or perhaps by checking the classified advertisements section of the newspaper. None of those methods are completely satisfactory solutions to the problem of finding and buying a home.”
Yes, that was a problem … back then. With real estate search tools now on everything from smartphones to smartwatches, it’s a reminder of how far we’ve come over the past decade. At some point, maybe the patent system will catch up.
