Court Clears Perplexity Shopping Agents

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A federal appeals court ruled Amazon could not use the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to block Perplexity’s Comet browser from helping users shop on password-protected Amazon pages. Judges said users, not Perplexity, accessed Amazon’s systems. The decision reverses an injunction and could shape whether AI agents may act on consumers’ behalf across closed online platforms.

Amazon does not want AI companies to bypass its sign-ons and allow users to shop there without the retailer’s permission.

Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

Amazon was not entitled to block an artificial intelligence browser from accessing its website and enabling users to find and purchase products, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, overturning a judge’s decision in favor of the world’s richest company.

An AI startup in San Francisco, Perplexity, launched its Comet browser last year that allowed customers to search password-protected websites like amazon.com and make purchases from its “store” without contacting Amazon. This March, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney of San Francisco ordered Perplexity to halt its customers’ access. She cited the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 federal anti-hacking law that prohibits intentionally accessing a computer without authorization, obtaining information and causing a financial loss of $5,000 or more.

But a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco put Chesney’s injunction on hold during Perplexity’s appeal, and on Tuesday a different panel, led by Judge Milan Smith, said Perplexity had not violated Amazon’s rights under the CFAA.

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“It is the user who ‘accesses’ Amazon’s computers,” not Perplexity, Smith said in a 3-0 ruling overturning Chesney’s injunction. He said Perplexity had explained that “any Amazon data was first transmitted to the user’s computer” and later was relayed to Perplexity through screenshots.

Amazon’s argument, if accepted, “could expose users themselves to criminal liability (under a conspiracy or aiding-and-abetting theory) for facilitating Perplexity’s purported unauthorized access to Amazon’s servers,” said Smith, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

He was joined by two appointees of President Donald Trump, 9th Circuit Judge Eric Tung and U.S. District Judge John Hinderaker of Arizona, temporarily assigned to the appeals court. Chesney was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

Amazon issued a statement Tuesday saying that “we respectfully disagree” with the ruling, but “remain confident in our case and are evaluating our next steps.” Those could include asking the full appeals court for a rehearing before a larger panel, and later appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On the other side, Andrew Crocker, an attorney with the San Francisco-based privacy-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the ruling “should be helpful in pushing back against use of the CFAA to mask anti-privacy and anti-competitive behavior.”

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Amazon drew support from the News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,200 U.S. publishers.

Allowing a person or company to access password-protected areas of a website without the owner’s permission could deprive “entire industries of critical protections from harmful, unauthorized incursions into their protected computer systems,” said attorney Michael Elkin in a filing with the court.

This “would undermine the ability of news publishers, as well as a host of other businesses, to generate the revenues essential to thrive in the digital economy,” he wrote.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said Perplexity’s use of its browser was similar to the use of digital tools by many reporters and scholars.

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“Imposing liability on Perplexity for the alleged conduct at issue here would expose journalists and researchers to civil and criminal penalties for using the digital tools of their trade,” attorney Esha Bhandari of the ACLU Foundation of New York told the court.