Reddit keeps DMCA lawsuit against web scraper alive
A US court has allowed Reddit to pursue its DMCA claim against SerpApi and Perplexity AI, while dismissing other claims. Legal experts say Reddit’s position in the copyright case is unusual.
Reddit’s legal battle with SerpApi and Perplexity AI is far from over, despite a partial setback. Judge Engelmayer has allowed Reddit’s DMCA claim to move forward, but dismissed the company’s unjust enrichment and unfair competition claims, ruling that they are preempted by the Copyright Act.
According to the judge, SerpApi and Perplexity AI may still prove through discovery that Reddit never authorized Google to protect its content in search results. The opinion also suggested that SerpApi could strengthen its defense by showing that all publicly accessible content in Google search results is not protected by copyright.
Meredith Rose, a DMCA expert at Public Knowledge, told Ars that Google and Reddit appear to be using whatever tools are available in response to the rapid growth of AI scraping in recent years. She found Reddit’s position in the DMCA claim strange, noting that under the ruling in the Google case, a party bringing a DMCA lawsuit must be the copyright owner, an exclusive licensee, or the person deploying and manufacturing the technological protection measure in question. Reddit, she said, is none of those. Rose also acknowledged that DMCA rulings often depend on 'vibes,' making it difficult to predict the outcome.
SerpApi’s lawyer, Jeff Homrig, said the company remains confident and believes the facts are on its side. He argued that SerpApi only accesses public search results, not Reddit’s platform, and that public information does not become protected merely because a platform wants to charge for it. Perplexity AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Advance Publications, the parent company of Ars Technica’s owner Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.
