Central District of California federal judge Otis D. Wright II denied RealPage Inc.’s, a property management accounting software seller, motion to dismiss a defensive claim that an accounting software vendor illegally tied its software by prohibiting customers from using competitors’ cloud database systems. RealPage filed the counterclaims in Yardi Systems Inc.’s lawsuit against it, which alleges that RealPage stole Yardi’s trade secrets after purchasing a former Yardi consulting group.
Yardi’s Voyager software allows property managers to track payments and other items, and Yardi’s business includes both software and the maintenance of cloud servers on which data related to its customers’ management operations is stored. Yardi alleges in its suit against RealPage that RealPage has stolen its trade secrets, including client and pricing information, and used the information to improve its cloud services to Yardi clients.
Judge Wright refused to dismiss the antitrust claims, saying RealPage had alleged facts establishing an illegal tying arrangement – a licensing contract that precluded its customers from hosting their Voyager processes on RealPage’s cloud servers – and “that Yardi has market power in the product market for the tying product to affect competition in the tied product market.”