Judge Gonzalez Rogers just dismissed Google’s DMCA anti-circumvention claim against SerpApi for allegedly circumventing Google’s SearchGuard “challenge” to prevent SerpApi from scraping Google search results.
The decision is nuanced. First, the Judge dismissed with prejudice Google’s claim “as a matter of law to the extent that they are premised on instances where SearchGuard controls access to Google Search results that do not contain any copyrighted content.” The DMCA claim must involve a technological protection matter with respect to copyrighted content.
Second, Judge Gonzalez Rogers dismissed but without prejudice Google’s DMCA claim “to the extent that they are premised on instances where SearchGuard controls access to Google Search results that contain a copyrighted component.” Although this part of Google claim did involve copyrighted content, the Judge dismissed this claim because “Google does not allege any facts that raise the inference that SearchGuard was implemented and functions to control access to copyrighted components that may be included in Google Search results ‘with the authority of the copyright owner[s].’” Google will get a chance to amend the complaint to address this deficiency.
Excerpt:
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