Google sued SerpApi over scraping its search results - Judge asked Google to show authorization from copyright owners

Google sued SerpApi over scraping its search results last year. Now, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed these claims with leave to amend, giving Google 21 days to refile its complaint if it can demonstrate authorization from copyright owners.

Basically, Google claimed under DMCA alleging SerpApi bypassed its anti-bot barrier ("SearchGuard"). However, DMCA requires Google to either own the copyright or authorization from copyright owners to block scrapers on their behalf. You can see the court filing here (PDF).

The judge agreed that spoofing browser fingerprints, rotating IPs, and solving CAPTCHAs to bypass SearchGuard constitutes "circumvention" under the DMCA. Circumvention alone is not illegal under the DMCA unless the barrier is actually guarding copyrighted works with the permission of the copyright holders.

Full Time:
SEO (Spain) 1 - 0 Google (Argentina)

Google should suck on it... SEO won this round : D

been running scraping automation for rank tracking n serp data for years, this ruling is huge if it holds up. always figured googles legal threats against scrapers were more bark than bite since technically serp results arent googles copyrighted content, theyre pulling from millions of diff site owners who never authorized google to protect that data on their behalf. curious if this opens door for more serp api tools to operate without constantly cat n mousing with anti bot measures, would make life way easier for anyone doing rank tracking at scale

Google can sue my ass

Lol, should stick to buying peoples patents. Then hiding it... No luck here Google!