A federal judge has dismissed Google’s lawsuit against SerpAPI, ruling that the company cannot use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent unauthorized scraping of public search results.

Key Points

• Google filed a lawsuit alleging that SerpAPI violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause by bypassing "SearchGuard," a tool designed to block automated scraping.
• The court ruled that Google failed to prove SearchGuard protects copyrighted material, noting that search results are primarily compilations of public information.
• Under 17 U.S.C. § 1201, a technological measure must protect a copyrighted work with the owner's authority to qualify for legal protection, which the judge found lacking here.
• The dismissal allows Google to potentially refile a narrower complaint focused specifically on copyrighted elements, such as Knowledge Panels, rather than general search results.

Why it Matters

This ruling serves as a significant check on efforts by major tech companies to use copyright law as a tool to restrict access to public web data. By limiting the scope of the DMCA in this context, the court protects the ability of third-party developers and AI companies to access and utilize information from the open web.