• by Wendy Davis , July 21, 2026

A federal judge has dismissed Google's complaint against the Texas-based company SerpApi, which allegedly circumvented attempts to prevent it from scraping search results.

The ruling, issued Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, allows Google to amend its complaint and bring it again.

Rogers' ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Google last year, when it alleged that SerpApi violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's  anti-circumvention provisions, which prohibit bypassing technological restrictions on copying.

Google estimated in its complaint that it receives "hundreds of millions of artificial search requests each day" from SerpApi.

Google also said that in January 2025 it launched "SearchGuard" in order to prevent scraping by bots, but that SerpApi used a workaround to bypass SearchGuard. For instance, according to Google, SerpApi "uses automated means to bypass CAPTCHAs."

SerpApi urged Rogers to dismiss the lawsuit at an early stage for several reasons.

Among others, the company argued that Google lacks "standing" to bring a claim under the copyright law's anti-circumvention provisions because Google lacks a copyright interest in the material on the search results pages.

SerpApi added that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not suggest "that a technology provider -- like Google -- that organizes public information and who has no copyright interest of its own falls within the Act’s 'zone of interests.'"

Google asked Rogers to reject that argument for several reasons, including that it licenses "high-resolution copyrighted photographs" for the Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Panels, which often appear in the search results.

Rogers largely agreed with SerpApi, essentially ruling that Google couldn't pursue claims regarding material it hadn't licensed and didn't otherwise own a copyright interest in.

She also suggested that Google could only pursue claims with regard to content it licensed if it also alleged that content's owner authorized the use of technological measures aimed at preventing copying.

The ruling allows Google to amend its complaint regarding the material it licensed, but not the other content on the search-results pages.

Google hasn't yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment.