Amazon v. Perplexity before Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
amazon perplexity
| Source: HN | Original article
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity AI, with Amazon as appellant and Perplexity as appellee.
Amazon.com Services, LLC’s lawsuit against Perplexity AI, Inc. has hit a setback in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The appellate panel vacated the district court’s preliminary injunction that had barred Perplexity from certain activities and sent the case back for further proceedings. The Ninth Circuit concluded that Amazon was unlikely to prevail on its Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) claim because the record did not show Perplexity “accessing” Amazon’s computers. While the lower court had cited irreparable harm and the public interest in favor of an injunction, the appellate judges found those equitable factors insufficient to sustain the order.
The decision matters because it clarifies the scope of the CFAA in disputes over data use between large cloud providers and emerging AI firms. A ruling that limits the reach of the statute could embolden startups that scrape publicly available information to train language models, while also signaling to incumbents that litigation over alleged “unauthorized access” faces a higher evidentiary bar. The case follows a wave of AI‑related legal battles, including recent reports on Perplexity’s deployment of GPT‑6 Astra and Amazon’s own experiments with AI‑driven advertising.
The next steps will unfold in the district court, where the parties must address the Ninth Circuit’s findings and determine whether a revised injunction is warranted. Observers will watch for any settlement talks, a possible petition for rehearing, or an appeal to the Supreme Court. The outcome could set a precedent for how the tech industry navigates intellectual‑property and data‑access disputes as AI models become ever more data‑hungry.
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