Key facts
- A U.S. appeals court overturned a ban on Perplexity's AI shopping tools on Amazon.
- The previous ruling had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its AI tools on Amazon.
- Amazon claimed Perplexity's AI agents violated a federal computer-hacking law.
- The appeals court found Amazon unlikely to succeed on its claim.
- The ruling reverses a previous injunction against Perplexity.
- The case involved allegations of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
- Perplexity's AI tools are designed to find products and information on e-commerce sites.
A U.S. appeals court has overturned a ruling that had temporarily barred Perplexity from utilizing its AI-powered shopping tools on Amazon's platform. The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reverses a previous injunction. The appeals court found that Amazon is unlikely to succeed in its claim that Perplexity's AI agents violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
The initial injunction was granted by a federal judge in Seattle after Amazon sued Perplexity, alleging that the AI company's shopping agents accessed Amazon's website in a way that violated the CFAA. Amazon contended that Perplexity's agents were not authorized to access its site and that their actions constituted unauthorized access. However, the appeals court disagreed with this assessment, stating that the CFAA claim was unlikely to prevail.
Perplexity's AI tools are designed to help users find products and information on e-commerce sites like Amazon. The company argued that its agents operate in a manner similar to human shoppers or standard web crawlers, and that the CFAA was not intended to cover such activities. The court's decision suggests it found Perplexity's arguments regarding the CFAA's applicability to be more persuasive in the context of the preliminary injunction.