Marketing AnalyticsData Privacy
Google Amends SerpApi Suit, Leans on Licensing Terms
Google refiled its DMCA complaint against scraping tool SerpApi on August 10, adding licensing contract language a federal judge said was missing from the original suit.
Key takeaways
- Google amended its DMCA complaint against SerpApi on August 10, three weeks after a judge dismissed both original claims on July 20.
- The amendment adds licensing terms Google says authorize SearchGuard, including a 2017-era partner deal and its Reddit content agreement.
- Claims involving non-copyrighted content are permanently dismissed; only claims tied to copyrighted results got a second chance to be pleaded.
- Marketers relying on scraping-based rank trackers should confirm whether their vendors use licensed data access, since the case could reshape scraping's legal footing.
Google Refiles Its DMCA Claims Against SerpApi
Google amended its DMCA complaint against SerpApi on August 10, three weeks after Chief U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers threw out both original claims over Search result scraping, according to Search Engine Journal's reporting. The rewrite adds the one piece the July 20 order said Google never pleaded: proof that copyright owners actually authorized SearchGuard, Google's anti-scraping system, to run in the first place.
The new filing leans on specific contract language. One licensing partner's deal, in versions dating to 2017, requires Google to make commercially reasonable efforts to keep licensed content away from outside access. Another provider's terms bar its material from being downloadable by third parties at all. Google also cites its Reddit agreement, which it says forbids third parties from pulling out and reselling licensed content, and notes Reddit asked for technical measures after suspecting scrapers were doing exactly that. Google still hedges, arguing SearchGuard never needed copyright-owner permission to function as an access control, the same argument the court already rejected once.
What The July Order Actually Said
Gonzalez Rogers split her July 20 dismissal into two lanes. Claims tied to results with no copyrighted content are dead for good: the DMCA doesn't cover uncopyrighted work, so there's nothing left to amend. Claims tied to results containing copyrighted material got a second chance, because Google had cited its Knowledge Panel image licenses without ever quoting the terms, leaving the court unable to confirm the authorization Section 1201(a)(3)(B) requires.
The judge wasn't entirely unkind to Google, either. She rejected SerpApi's argument that only copyright owners, not Google, can bring a DMCA claim, holding the statute covers any person injured by a violation. She also found SearchGuard doesn't have to target copyrighted material narrowly to qualify for protection. Whether the new licensing language finally satisfies the authority requirement she flagged in July is now SerpApi's move to contest.
The Risk For Marketers Who Scrape Rank Data
For marketers, the stakes sit downstream of the docket. SerpApi-style scraping underpins a chunk of the rank-tracking, SERP-feature monitoring and competitive intelligence data agencies feed into dashboards every week. If Google's licensing argument eventually holds, the legal footing for scraping-based SERP tools gets shakier, and vendors built entirely on unlicensed collection could face the same access-control fight Google is waging here.
This is the same fight CMO Mag covered when the July dismissal first landed, and it sits inside a wider regulatory scramble over who gets to scrape whom as AI crawlers multiply. Nothing here is settled: the case returns to Gonzalez Rogers with SerpApi free to challenge the new terms, and no ruling has decided whether they meet the DMCA's authority requirement.
Track how search-data access rules are reshaping competitive intelligence.
Advertiser disclosure: some links in our articles are affiliate links, and CMO Mag may earn a commission or referral fee if you sign up or buy through them, at no cost to you. It never affects our editorial coverage. See our advertising & affiliate policy.
More in Marketing Analytics
View all
Search Console's New Generative AI Report Splits SEOs on Reddit
A generative AI report is showing up inside Google Search Console, and a Reddit thread of SEO practitioners is already arguing over whether the numbers it shows are worth trusting.
Google Analytics Adds AI Campaign Benchmarking via Ask Advisor
Google is rolling out a benchmarking feature inside Ask Advisor that stacks your Google Analytics campaign data against anonymized peer averages, but the peer-group mechanics still have gaps worth checking now.
Always Discreet's Biggest-Ever Push Uses NFL Moms, Not Stigma
Always Discreet's 'Protect the Moment' campaign, its biggest since launching in 2014, puts three NFL player moms in national ads to normalize incontinence among football fans.
Discussion
No comments yet. Be the first to say something worth reading.