Dallas-Based Auction House Faces Off Against Christie's In Tech Lawsuit

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NEW YORK (AP) — Auction giant Christie's is accused in a lawsuit of using a computer program to scrape research, images and price information from a rival's website and then reselling that data as part of its own subscription database.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions announced the suit Monday. It accuses Christie's of copyright infringement, computer fraud and other wrongdoing.

The suit accuses Christie's and its independently operated subsidiary Collectrium of unlawfully appropriating nearly 3 million auction sale item listings from Heritage's website.

Heritage claims its data was then used in Collectrium's database of more than 11 million items.

Christie's in New York City declined to comment.

Heritage said it wants $150,000 from Christie's for each alleged instance of copyright infringement.

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