A recent court dismissal may have halted Google‘s initial legal strategy against web-scraping firm SerpApi. However, the search giant is making it clear that the fight is far from over. Despite a federal judge ruling that search results themselves aren’t protected under copyright law, Google confirmed to Ars Technica that it plans to double down and amend its complaint against SerpApi to keep AI scraping bots from harvesting its platform data.
The narrow path in Google’s amended strategy
Google originally sued SerpApi last December under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The company claimed the scraper bypassed security measures to sell search data through an unauthorized service. Reddit filed a similar lawsuit shortly before. They targeted SerpApi and AI search engine Perplexity for scraping Reddit content indexed in Google results.
When the judge granted SerpApi’s motion to dismiss—ruling Google lacked standing because it doesn’t own public search results—it looked like a decisive blow. However, Google spokesperson José Castañeda stated the company plans to utilize the court’s 21-day window to file an amended complaint.
To keep the lawsuit alive, Google’s new argument will focus on “Knowledge Panels.” The firm claims these summary boxes contain explicitly licensed media where rights holders authorized Google to deploy anti-scraping protections.
High stakes for Google, Reddit, and the open web
Attempting this legal maneuver isn’t without risk. Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge, warned that Google could talk itself into a corner.
If Google claims Knowledge Panels are packed with copyrighted material to stop scrapers, it risks admitting it algorithmically reproduces unlicensed content elsewhere across search results, potentially opening the door to separate fair use lawsuits. The outcome also directly impacts Reddit, whose pending lawsuit faces similar standing issues because Reddit doesn’t own the content users post.
Meanwhile, SerpApi—whose structured search data supports major clients like Nvidia, Uber, and Adobe—insists platforms like Google and Reddit don’t own the open internet and shouldn’t act as “toll collectors” for public information.
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