SerpApi Challenges Google’s Right To Sue Over SERP Scraping

SerpApi filed a motion to dismiss Google’s federal lawsuit, two months after Google sued the company underneath the DMCA for allegedly bypassing its SearchGuard anti-scraping system.

The submitting goes past disputing the technical allegations. SerpApi is difficult whether or not Google has the authorized proper to carry the case in any respect.

The Standing Query

SerpApi’s core argument is that the DMCA protects copyright homeowners, not corporations that show others’ content material.

Google’s complaint cited licensed photos in Information Panels, merchant-supplied photographs in Procuring outcomes, and third-party content material in Maps as examples of copyrighted materials SerpApi allegedly scraped.

SerpApi CEO Julien Khaleghy wrote that the content material in Google’s search outcomes belongs to publishers, authors, and creators, to not Google.

Khaleghy writes:

“Google is an internet site operator. It’s not the copyright holder of the knowledge it surfaces.”

Khaleghy argued that solely a copyright holder can authorize entry controls underneath the DMCA. Google, he wrote, is making an attempt to say these rights with out the data or consent of the creators whose work is at difficulty.

Within the 31-page movement, SerpApi invokes the Supreme Courtroom’s 2014 ruling in Lexmark Worldwide, Inc. v. Static Management Parts, Inc., which established {that a} plaintiff should present accidents throughout the “zone of pursuits” the regulation was designed to guard. SerpApi argues Google’s alleged accidents, together with infrastructure prices and misplaced advert income from automated queries, don’t fall inside what the DMCA was constructed to deal with.

The Circumvention Query

SerpApi additionally disputes whether or not bypassing SearchGuard counts as circumvention underneath the DMCA.

Google alleged in December that SerpApi solved JavaScript challenges, used rotating IP addresses, and mimicked human browser conduct to get previous SearchGuard.

Khaleghy wrote that the DMCA defines “to bypass a technological measure,” partly, as “to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or in any other case to keep away from, bypass, take away, deactivate, or impair a technological measure,” and argued SerpApi does none of these issues.

Khaleghy writes:

“We entry publicly seen internet pages, the identical ones accessible to any browser. We don’t break encryption. We don’t disable authentication programs.”

The movement states Google “doesn’t allege unscrambling or decryption of any work, or the impairment, deactivation, or elimination of any entry system.” SerpApi calls SearchGuard a bot-management software, not a copyright entry management.

Why This Issues

The result may attain past SerpApi. Google’s DMCA idea, if accepted, would let any platform displaying licensed third-party content material use the statute to dam automated entry to publicly seen pages.

After we covered Google’s original filing in December, I famous the central query was whether or not SearchGuard qualifies as a DMCA-protected entry management. SerpApi’s movement now provides a layer beneath that. Even when SearchGuard qualifies, SerpApi argues Google isn’t the suitable social gathering to implement it.

In a separate case selected December 15, 2025, U.S. District Choose Sidney Stein dismissed Ziff Davis’s DMCA Part 1201(a) anti-circumvention declare tied to robots.txt towards OpenAI, holding Ziff Davis did not plausibly allege that robots.txt is a technological measure that successfully controls entry, or that OpenAI circumvented it.

Google’s SearchGuard is extra technically complicated than a robots.txt directive, however each instances take a look at whether or not the DMCA can be utilized to limit automated entry to publicly out there content material.

Wanting Forward

The listening to on SerpApi’s movement is scheduled for Might 19, 2026. Google will file its opposition earlier than then.

SerpApi additionally filed a movement to dismiss in a separate lawsuit introduced by Reddit in October, which named SerpApi alongside Perplexity, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy. Each instances increase questions on utilizing DMCA anti-circumvention claims to problem bot evasion and automatic entry to pages which are viewable in a standard browser.

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