Judge Dismisses Google Complaint Against Scraper Over Search Result Circumvention

A federal judge has dismissed Google's complaint against SerpApi, a Texas-based company accused of scraping search results. The ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on July 21, 2026, allows Google to amend its complaint and bring it again.

Google alleged that SerpApi violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions by bypassing technological restrictions on copying search results. The company estimated that it receives 'hundreds of millions' of artificial search requests each day from SerpApi, which used a workaround to bypass Google's SearchGuard.

SerpApi argued that Google lacks standing to bring the claim under the copyright law's anti-circumvention provisions because Google has no copyright interest in the material on the search results pages. Judge Rogers largely agreed with SerpApi, ruling that Google could only pursue claims regarding content it licensed if it also alleged that the content's owner authorized the use of technological measures aimed at preventing copying.