Flint Bishop strikes blow to Tesco's nascent property site

Flint Bishop Solicitors has scored a victory against Tesco, forcing the retail giant to pull hundreds of housing adverts from its fledgling home-selling site.

The East Midlands firm threatened the supermarket chain with an injunction after its client, Derbyshire estate agent Hannells, complained about its properties appearing on the site.

Last weekend Tesco launched Tesco Property Markets, linking into a portfolio of thousands of properties listed on online portal fish4homes. Tesco also gives home sellers the option of posting their advertisements on the site independently for a flat fee of £199, effectively undercutting estate agency fees, which can be up to 3 per cent of the house price.

Qamer Ghafoor, a commercial dispute resolution partner at Flint Bishop, said Alison Brain, managing director of Hannells, approached the firm with concerns that properties it was the agent for were being advertised on Tesco's website.

Ghafoor threatened Tesco with an injunction, claiming his client's copyright had been infringed with the reproduction of the property ads' photos and text.

Before the matter got to court Tesco removed the client's property list and fish4homes has since terminated its relationship with Tesco.

Tesco was advised on the matter by Berwin Leighton Paisner.