Google sues SerpApi over search scraping in copyright lawsuit

Google filed a federal lawsuit on December 19, 2025, in opposition to Texas-based SerpApi LLC for systematically circumventing technological protections to scrape copyrighted content material from Google Search outcomes. The criticism alleges violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by billions of automated queries that bypass safety measures designed to guard licensed materials showing in search options like Information Panels, Google Purchasing, and Google Maps.

The 13-page criticism filed in the US District Court docket for the Northern District of California names SerpApi as defendant in case quantity 25-10826. Google seeks statutory damages starting from $200 to $2,500 for every circumvention act, together with injunctive reduction to halt the scraping operations. Provided that SerpApi processes a whole bunch of tens of millions of automated search requests each day, the potential legal responsibility extends into astronomical territory relative to the corporate’s reported annual income of some million {dollars}.

Central to the lawsuit is Google’s SearchGuard know-how, a safety measure that launched in January 2025 after “tens of hundreds of individual hours and tens of millions of {dollars} of funding.” SearchGuard sends JavaScript challenges to look queries from unrecognized sources, requiring browsers to transmit particular info proving requests originate from human customers slightly than automated programs. Whereas reliable customers’ browsers resolve these challenges seamlessly, automated scraping instruments sometimes can not entry search outcomes and the copyrighted works inside them.

SerpApi founder Julien Khaleghy established the Austin-based firm in 2017 after concluding that “scraping photos from Google was an intensive course of.” The enterprise mannequin facilities on appropriating output from companies that invested considerably to generate it, then delivering that content material to 3rd events for a payment by paid subscription tiers. SerpApi advertises its “Google Search API” as a method to “Scrape Google,” providing specialised companies concentrating on Information Graph blocks, Google Purchasing listings, and Google Maps information.

The criticism describes how SerpApi developed circumvention strategies instantly after SearchGuard’s January 2025 deployment successfully blocked the corporate’s entry to Google’s search outcomes. Khaleghy just lately characterised the method as “creating pretend browsers utilizing a large number of IP addresses that Google sees as regular customers.” These methods contain misrepresenting gadget info, software program particulars, or location information when responding to SearchGuard challenges, or syndicating reliable authorizations throughout unauthorized machines worldwide to allow automated queries showing as licensed site visitors.

Google licenses copyrighted content material particularly to reinforce search outcomes and strengthen aggressive positioning. Information Panels show high-resolution photos obtained by copyright licenses, as illustrated within the criticism with a Willie Mays {photograph}. Google Purchasing options merchant-supplied product photos and descriptions, whereas Google Maps incorporates numerous terrestrial footage, business-supplied imagery, and user-generated opinions. The criticism emphasizes that SerpApi takes this licensed content material with out permission or compensation to rights holders, disrupting Google’s content material partnerships and threatening relationships with licensors.

SerpApi’s scraping operations impose each fastened and marginal prices on Google’s infrastructure to course of queries that generate no income offset. The Phrases of Service Settlement expressly forbids automated entry to look content material “in violation of the machine-readable directions on our net pages (for instance, robots.txt information that disallow crawling, coaching, or different actions).” Google’s robots.txt directions clearly point out that Search outcomes shouldn’t be crawled by automated programs.

The technical sophistication of SerpApi’s circumvention seems within the firm’s personal advertising and marketing supplies. A latest weblog submit defined that SearchGuard had made net scraping “tougher,” however claimed the corporate was “lucky to be minimally impacted” as a result of companies had “already pre-solved Google’s JavaScript problem.” When Google subsequently elevated SearchGuard problem, SerpApi acknowledged transient interruptions however “because of the devoted efforts of our engineers we had been rapidly capable of resolve the issue.” The corporate promised continued circumvention no matter future protections: “It is arduous to say what Google would possibly do going ahead. Nonetheless, at SerpApi we’re assured in our means to deal with any new variations to those modifications Google would possibly introduce.”

The criticism alleges SerpApi’s circumvention violates Part 1201(a)(1)(A) of the Copyright Act, which prohibits circumventing technological measures controlling entry to copyrighted materials. Every circumvention act carries statutory damages between $200 and $2,500. Moreover, Part 1201(a)(2) violations stem from manufacturing, providing, offering, or trafficking in companies designed to bypass technological measures. SerpApi boldly markets these capabilities, promising prospects they “need not care about … captcha, IP tackle, bots detection, sustaining user-agent, HTML headers, [or] being blocked by Google” as a result of the corporate makes use of “superior algorithms to bypass CAPTCHAs and different anti-bot mechanisms, making certain uninterrupted and environment friendly information extraction.”

Google estimates SerpApi’s question quantity has elevated as a lot as 25,000 % over the previous two years, now reaching a whole bunch of tens of millions of automated search requests each day. This large scale amplifies each the direct infrastructure prices Google bears and the broader aggressive hurt from making licensed content material out there to companies that needn’t incur comparable licensing bills.

The lawsuit represents the second main authorized motion in opposition to SerpApi this yr. Reddit sued SerpApi on October 22, 2025, together with Oxylabs, AWMProxy, and Perplexity AI, for circumventing each Reddit’s anti-scraping measures and Google’s SearchGuard system to scrape Reddit content material from Google search outcomes pages. That 41-page criticism described defendants as “just like would-be financial institution robbers, who, understanding they can not get into the financial institution vault, break into the armored truck carrying the money as a substitute.”

The scraping controversy unfolds amid broader business tensions over content material entry and AI coaching information. Penske Media Corporation filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on September 12, 2025, alleging the search large coerces publishers into offering content material for AI programs with out compensation whereas decreasing web site site visitors. That criticism examined how Google’s AI merchandise—together with Bard, Gemini, Search Generative Expertise, AI Overviews, and AI Mode—depend on massive language fashions skilled on large textual content corpuses scraped from writer web sites.

Publishers rallied against unauthorized AI scraping at an IAB Tech Lab summit in July 2025, with over 80 media executives gathering in New York to deal with what many take into account an existential risk to digital publishing. The assembly included representatives from Google and Meta alongside business leaders confronting AI firms that scrape writer content material with out consent or compensation. Analysis information offered confirmed over 35 % of high web sites now block OpenAI’s GPTBot, whereas HUMAN Safety documented 107 % year-over-year will increase in scraping assaults.

Google’s authorized technique in opposition to SerpApi differs from earlier scraping disputes by emphasizing copyright safety slightly than contract violations or phrases of service breaches. The DMCA framework gives statutory damages that would theoretically exceed SerpApi’s means to pay given the large variety of alleged violations. The criticism acknowledges this actuality, stating that “SerpApi will probably be unable to pay” the statutory damages award regardless of “orders of magnitude increased” legal responsibility that grows with a whole bunch of tens of millions of further violations each day.

Halimah DeLaine Prado, Basic Counsel at Google, emphasised the corporate’s dedication to defending content material companions within the December 19 announcement: “We fled a swimsuit right now in opposition to the scraping firm SerpApi for circumventing safety measures defending others’ copyrighted content material that seems in Google search outcomes. We did this to ask a court docket to cease SerpApi’s bots and their malicious scraping, which violates the alternatives of internet sites and rightsholders about who ought to have entry to their content material.”

The criticism describes SearchGuard as working primarily by JavaScript challenges that validate queries originate from actual customers slightly than automated software program. For human customers, browsers run the JavaScript code and ship required info seamlessly with out disrupting expertise. Automated programs submitting queries at large scale sometimes can not resolve the SearchGuard problem, leading to denied entry to Google’s search outcomes and copyrighted works inside them.

SerpApi operates by a number of misleading methods in line with the criticism. When submitting automated queries and receiving SearchGuard challenges, the corporate could misrepresent the gadget, software program, or location from which queries are despatched to resolve challenges and procure authorization. Alternatively, SerpApi could resolve challenges with reliable requests then syndicate ensuing authorizations, sharing them with unauthorized machines globally to allow pretend browsers producing automated queries showing licensed to Google. The corporate additionally makes use of automated means to bypass CAPTCHAs, one other SearchGuard element testing customers to make sure they’re people slightly than machines.

The lawsuit seeks a number of types of reduction past financial damages. Google requests the court docket to enjoin SerpApi from violating Part 1201 by circumventing technological measures or by designing, manufacturing, advertising and marketing, promoting, or trafficking in any know-how designed to bypass such measures. The criticism additionally seeks to compel destruction of any know-how, gadget, or product concerned in Part 1201 violations, together with prices, attorneys’ charges, prejudgment and post-judgment curiosity.

Google’s funding in SearchGuard displays broader platform safety priorities amid escalating automated threats. The corporate has carried out comparable protecting measures throughout its ecosystem, although every faces circumvention makes an attempt from subtle actors. The platform updated crawler verification processes in March 2025 to supply each day IP vary refreshes slightly than weekly updates, addressing suggestions from massive community operators involved about potential Googlebot impersonation.

The case presents technical questions on how courts will interpret DMCA protections when utilized to look engine safety measures. Conventional Part 1201 circumstances typically contain circumventing entry controls for leisure media like DVDs or video video games. Making use of the identical framework to guard dynamically generated search outcomes containing third-party copyrighted content material represents a novel authorized method that would set up precedent for platform safety measures.

SerpApi’s enterprise operations prolong past Google scraping to embody a number of serps and platforms. The corporate advertises APIs for Amazon, Bing, DuckDuckGo, eBay, Walmart, Yelp, YouTube, and quite a few different companies. This diversified portfolio suggests potential vulnerability to comparable authorized challenges from different platforms investing in anti-scraping applied sciences to guard copyrighted content material and industrial relationships.

Trade observers word the lawsuit’s timing coincides with intensifying regulatory scrutiny of knowledge scraping practices. Amazon blocked AI bots from major tech companies in August 2025, updating its robots.txt file to ban crawlers from Meta, Google, Huawei, Mistral, and different know-how companies. The e-commerce large maintains a $56 billion promoting enterprise constructed round buyers looking its market, with third-party AI instruments that bypass Amazon’s storefront probably undermining each web site site visitors and promoting income streams.

Google’s criticism emphasizes hurt extending past direct infrastructure prices to incorporate undermining funding in licensed copyrighted content material, threatening relationships with content material licensors who count on safety in opposition to misappropriation, and forcing substantial expenditures growing and enhancing technological measures defending in opposition to unauthorized scraping. These multifaceted damages arguments help each precise damages restoration and statutory damages election underneath DMCA provisions.

The authorized idea rests on SearchGuard qualifying as a technological measure that “successfully controls entry” to copyrighted works inside the which means of Part 1201. The statute requires that technological measures, of their unusual course of operation, necessitate software of data to realize entry to protected works. Google argues SearchGuard meets this normal by requiring licensed info transmission to entry search outcomes and copyrighted content material they include.

SerpApi’s advertising and marketing supplies present in depth proof supporting Google’s claims. The corporate explicitly advertises circumvention capabilities as its core service providing, distinguishing itself from rivals by superior means to bypass platform protections. This brazen method could strengthen Google’s case by demonstrating that SerpApi designed and marketed companies with data they might circumvent technological measures, satisfying Part 1201(a)(2) necessities.

The criticism notes that at the very least one Google content material associate, Reddit, already sued SerpApi for misconduct associated to unauthorized content material entry. Reddit’s October lawsuit described how defendants bypassed two safety layers—Reddit’s anti-scraping measures and Google’s SearchGuard system—to entry and scrape Reddit content material from search outcomes. That parallel litigation establishes sample of conduct demonstrating SerpApi’s systematic method to circumventing platform protections throughout a number of targets.

Timeline

Abstract

Who: Google LLC filed the lawsuit in opposition to SerpApi LLC, a Texas-based firm based by Julien Khaleghy in 2017 that gives automated net scraping companies by API subscriptions. The criticism was filed by Google Basic Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati attorneys.

What: The lawsuit alleges SerpApi violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing Google’s SearchGuard technological safety measures to scrape copyrighted content material from search outcomes pages. SerpApi allegedly processes a whole bunch of tens of millions of automated queries each day, misrepresenting gadget info and syndicating authorizations to bypass safety challenges designed to tell apart human customers from automated bots.

When: The criticism was filed December 19, 2025, in federal court docket, following SearchGuard’s January 2025 deployment and SerpApi’s instant improvement of circumvention methods. Google estimates SerpApi’s scraping quantity elevated as a lot as 25,000 % over the previous two years.

The place: The case was filed in the US District Court docket for the Northern District of California as case quantity 25-10826, concentrating on SerpApi’s operations from its Austin, Texas headquarters that have an effect on Google’s Mountain View, California operations and content material licensing relationships.

Why: Google seeks to guard copyrighted content material licensed from third events that seems in Information Panels, Google Purchasing, and Google Maps options. The lawsuit goals to cease unauthorized appropriation of licensed materials, protect content material associate relationships, get well infrastructure prices from processing automated queries, and set up authorized precedent for platform safety measures underneath DMCA provisions.