Google’s anti-search-scraping lawsuit dismissed

2026-07-24 · Source: Computerworld · Field: Legal & Regulatory — Intellectual Property & Patents, Compliance & Risk Management · Depth: Fundamental Awareness, quick

Summary

The US District Court for the Northern District of California has dismissed Google's lawsuit against SerpApi, a company that scrapes search results to train AI models. Google initiated the lawsuit in December, alleging that SerpApi's actions breached the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by circumventing technological measures and trafficking in protected technology, claiming to protect copyright holders. However, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed with SerpApi's argument that the URLs and links served by Google do not inherently entail copyright. The court also found no indication that copyright holders had authorized Google to take action on their behalf. Google has been granted 21 days to amend its complaint to demonstrate it was acting for copyright owners.

Key takeaway

For legal professionals advising tech companies on data acquisition for AI, this dismissal highlights that scraping public search results may not constitute a DMCA or copyright infringement. You should scrutinize whether the specific data scraped is copyrightable and if your client has explicit authorization from copyright holders to pursue legal action. This ruling suggests a higher bar for proving copyright infringement in web scraping cases.

Key insights

Scraping public search results for AI training may not inherently violate copyright or DMCA.

Principles

• URLs and links in search results are not inherently copyrighted.
• Copyright holders must authorize legal action on their behalf.

In practice

• Review legal standing for copyright claims on public data.
• Ensure explicit authorization from copyright owners for enforcement.

Topics

• Web Scraping
• Copyright Law
• DMCA
• AI Training Data
• Google Lawsuit
• SerpApi

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Computerworld.