Google will keep suing SerpApi over scraping search results

In short: Google says it will continue its lawsuit against SerpApi, even after a judge quickly threw out most of Google’s claims under the DMCA.

What happened

Google sued SerpApi in December, saying the company bypassed Google’s defenses and copied Google search results at scale. SerpApi sells that copied data through a service it calls a “Google Search API,” which is a tool that lets other companies pull search results automatically.

Google based its case on the DMCA, a US copyright law often used to stop people from bypassing copy protection. The unusual part is that search results themselves are not copyrighted, like a list of book titles is not a book.

Last week, a judge granted SerpApi’s request to dismiss the case early. The judge said Google did not have legal standing, meaning Google did not show it owned the copyrighted material it claimed was being protected, or that it was clearly acting for the actual copyright owners.

Google says it will not drop the fight. A spokesperson told Ars Technica that Google plans to file an amended complaint within 21 days, focusing more narrowly on “knowledge panels,” the info boxes that sometimes appear in search results. Google argues those panels can include licensed material, meaning content Google has permission to show.

Reddit is connected to this story because it filed a similar lawsuit earlier, also pointing at scraping of content that appears in Google results. An expert interviewed by Ars said both companies appear to be reaching for any legal tool available as AI scraping rises.

Why it matters

This legal fight could shape how easy it is for companies, researchers, and journalists to collect public web data using automated tools (like a very fast web reader). If large platforms succeed, more parts of the open web could become harder to access without paying or signing special deals.

Source: Arstechnica