Marketing AnalyticsData Privacy
Court Dismisses Google's DMCA Claims Against SerpApi
Chief U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed Google's anti-circumvention claims against SerpApi, ruling that blocking scrapers from results with no copyrighted content doesn't violate the DMCA.
Key takeaways
- A federal judge dismissed Google's core DMCA claims against SerpApi over scraping public search results.
- The court ruled that SearchGuard, Google's anti-scraping tech, can't regulate access to results containing no copyrighted content.
- Claims tied to results without copyrighted content were dismissed for good; claims tied to licensed Knowledge Panel images got 21 days to amend.
- The judge rejected SerpApi's argument that Google lacked standing to sue under the DMCA.
- Marketers using SERP intelligence and competitive scraping tools now have firmer legal footing, though the Knowledge Panel image question stays open.
What the Court Ruled
A federal judge dismissed Google's DMCA claims against SerpApi on July 21, 2026, ruling that blocking automated tools from public search results isn't copyright circumvention when those results contain no copyrighted material. That's the headline finding from Chief U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, reported by
Search Engine Journal, and it lands as a meaningful data point for anyone whose team pulls competitive SERP data for rank tracking, share-of-voice reporting, or SEO forecasting.
Google sued SerpApi in December, alleging the company bypassed SearchGuard, Google's anti-scraping system, to collect and resell search results. SerpApi moved to dismiss in February, arguing the DMCA protects copyrighted works, not raw access controls. The judge agreed on the narrow point that matters most to scrapers: if there's no copyrighted work behind the wall, there's no wall to circumvent under the statute.
Window Google has to amend claims tied to copyrighted Knowledge Panel images
Search Engine Journal, July 2026
Where the Case Still Has Legs
The ruling wasn't a total loss for Google. Search results sometimes surface a Knowledge Panel containing licensed images, and there the court found Google hadn't shown it used SearchGuard with the copyright owners' authorization, as the law requires. Those claims were dismissed too, but with permission to amend, meaning Google gets another shot if it can tie SearchGuard's protection directly to licensed content.
The judge also rejected SerpApi's separate argument that Google lacked standing to sue at all, since Google doesn't own the underlying search results. Gonzalez Rogers clarified that DMCA protection isn't limited to copyright owners, so that defense didn't hold. SerpApi CEO Julien Khaleghy called the outcome a win for open access to public data and said the company will keep supporting developers and businesses that depend on it.
Blocking scrapers from results with no copyrighted content is not copyright circumvention.
Why Marketers Should Care
This ruling matters for any team building on SERP intelligence tools or feeding competitive search data into attribution and forecasting models. It's a signal, not a blank check: the Knowledge Panel carve-out means data pulled near licensed images still carries legal exposure, so audit what your scraping vendor actually collects before treating this as settled law across every result type.
The broader context is a marketing measurement stack getting more contested as platforms tighten access and AI search reshapes what
clicks and citations even mean. Pair any SERP-scraping decisions with a hard look at your attribution model, since third-party search data feeding into it just got a firmer, if not fully settled, legal footing.
Track how this ruling reshapes your search data strategy.
Frequently asked questions
No. The claims tied to search results without copyrighted content were dismissed without a chance to amend. Claims tied to licensed Knowledge Panel images were dismissed but Google has 21 days to amend that narrow part.
The ruling only addresses whether bypassing SearchGuard on results with no copyrighted content violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules. It doesn't clear other legal risks like terms-of-service violations, and the Knowledge Panel image question remains open.
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