WILMINGTON (LN) — A federal judge on Thursday allowed Apollo.io to pursue antitrust and false advertising counterclaims against ZoomInfo Technologies LLC, denying the rival’s motion to dismiss.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled that Apollo plausibly alleged that ZoomInfo possessed monopoly power in the U.S. market for sales intelligence data and maintained that power through anticompetitive conduct, including acquiring competitors and spreading misinformation.
The ruling allows Apollo to proceed with its Sherman Act monopolization claim, a Lanham Act false advertising claim, and a state law tortious interference claim. The court granted ZoomInfo’s motion to dismiss only on Apollo’s Delaware Deceptive Trade Practices Act claim, finding it failed to identify specific statutory subsections.
Apollo alleges ZoomInfo spent about $1 billion between 2015 and 2022 to acquire at least eight companies, including competitors such as EverString, to gain control of patents and customer bases. Apollo claims ZoomInfo then weaponized those patents in a lawsuit filed in March 2025 while simultaneously launching a campaign to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Apollo’s products.
The counterclaims detail a March 2025 incident in which Conor MacCarvill, a senior performance marketing manager at ZoomInfo, reposted a LinkedIn message accusing Apollo of “theft” and “unethical greed” for breaking LinkedIn’s terms of service.
“Whether companies ethically source the data they sell is IMPORTANT,” MacCarvill wrote, which Apollo alleges was amplified by at least 12 other ZoomInfo employees. “Seamless and Apollo breaking LinkedIn [terms of service] isn’t a minor infraction, it is not a ‘growth hack,’ it’s not ‘just business’, it’s theft.”
Apollo claims ZoomInfo employees also told customers that Apollo was “banned from LinkedIn for scraping users’ [personal identifiable information]” and that its data had become “increasingly unreliable.” One customer reportedly entered into business with ZoomInfo and paid a higher price after hearing these statements, according to the counterclaims.
Choe-Groves found that Apollo sufficiently pled that ZoomInfo’s conduct was not competition on the merits but rather an attempt to exclude a rival. The court noted that false statements about a rival can give rise to antitrust liability when combined with other anticompetitive acts, particularly in a market where data integration creates high switching costs for customers.
The judge also rejected ZoomInfo’s argument that Noerr-Pennington immunity barred the antitrust claims related to the patent litigation, ruling that the issue requires a fact-intensive analysis beyond the motion to dismiss stage.
ZoomInfo argued that Apollo’s success undermined the monopoly power allegations and that the disparagement campaign did not foreclose competition. The court disagreed, noting that Apollo alleged ZoomInfo’s scheme specifically halted Apollo’s growth and raised its costs.
The court granted ZoomInfo’s motion to dismiss the Delaware Deceptive Trade Practices Act claim without prejudice, stating the counterclaims failed to put ZoomInfo on notice of which of the statute’s 12 subsections were violated.
The parties must file a joint proposed scheduling order by May 13, 2026, as the court lifted the stay on discovery for the non-patent counterclaims.