Web Scraping Legal News

Thomson Reuters v. Ross: the Third Circuit affirms. On September 29, 2026, a Third Circuit panel (Judges Restrepo, Montgomery-Reeves and Bove; opinion by Judge Montgomery-Reeves) decided Ross Intelligence's interlocutory appeal of the 2025 ruling. The court held that Thomson Reuters's 2,243 headnotes "are original enough for copyright protection" and that Ross's use of them was not fair: the second fair-use factor weighed slightly for Ross, the first, third and fourth against it, and the court affirmed partial summary judgment for Thomson Reuters (opinion, No. 25-2153; appeal docket). The court called it "no more than an ordinary copyright case". For scrapers, the point is that collecting curated, edited content to build a competing product is copying, whatever the technology.

Reddit v. Perplexity and three data companies. Filed on October 22, 2025, in the Southern District of New York, Reddit's suit targets an AI answer engine and three companies that collect search data, over Reddit content taken from Google's results. On July 31, 2026, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer largely denied the motions to dismiss of Perplexity and one data company: the claims under the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision, section 1201(a), and a New York civil-conspiracy claim go forward, while a section 1201(b) claim and the state-law unjust-enrichment and unfair-competition claims were dismissed. This is not a finding of liability, but it lets a claim about getting past technical barriers go to the merits. A third data company's own motion to dismiss was briefed in August and September 2026, and the case was still active in October 2026 (docket, No. 1:25-cv-08736).

Google v. a SERP data provider. On December 19, 2025, Google sued a company that sells Google search results through an API. On July 20, 2026, Chief Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted the defendant's motion to dismiss and gave Google until August 10 to amend; Google filed an amended complaint that day, and a new motion to dismiss followed (docket, N.D. Cal. No. 4:25-cv-10826). What it means for scraping Google is in is scraping Google legal.

Amazon v. Perplexity: an injunction against an AI shopping agent. Amazon sued Perplexity on November 4, 2025, over the agentic shopping features of Perplexity's Comet browser. On March 9, 2026, Judge Maxine M. Chesney granted Amazon's motion for preliminary injunctive relief, and Perplexity appealed to the Ninth Circuit the next day (No. 26-1444); the appeal was argued on June 11, 2026, and the docket showed no decision on October 23, 2026 (docket, N.D. Cal. No. 3:25-cv-09514). In August 2026 Amazon added "Agent Terms" to its Conditions of Use (last updated August 14, 2026): agents must identify themselves in the user agent string, must not imitate human behavior or complete CAPTCHAs, and must stop when Amazon asks. More in is scraping Amazon legal.

LinkedIn v. a data provider. LinkedIn sued a company that sold LinkedIn data through an API on October 2, 2025; the case ended in a judgment on consent on September 16, 2026 (docket, N.D. Cal. No. 5:25-cv-08393). LinkedIn's User Agreement (effective November 3, 2025) still bars software and scripts that "scrape or copy the Services, including profiles". See is scraping LinkedIn allowed.

Reddit v. Anthropic. Reddit's contract-based suit over the use of Reddit content was removed to federal court in July 2025; on March 28, 2026, the federal court granted the motion to remand it to state court (docket, No. 3:25-cv-05643).

EU: the EDPB's scraping guidelines. On July 7, 2026, the European Data Protection Board adopted Guidelines 03/2026 on web scraping in the context of generative AI for public consultation. They expect scrapers to exclude sites that clearly oppose scraping, naming robots.txt, ai.txt and CAPTCHAs as signals. The European picture is in the UK and EU guide.

Platform terms in 2026. TikTok's US Terms of Service, last updated July 15, 2026, are now with TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC and still forbid scraping without written approval. eBay's robots.txt, version "v30.2_COM_August_2026", adds an agent policy: "Checkouts are strictly for human users" (eBay robots.txt).

Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence. On February 11, 2025, Judge Stephanos Bibas, sitting by designation, held that copying Westlaw headnotes to train a competing legal research tool was not fair use; the Third Circuit affirmed in 2026 (above) (district docket, D. Del. No. 1:20-cv-00613).

Ryanair v. Booking.com. A Delaware jury found for Ryanair on its CFAA claim over screen scraping of its website on July 18, 2024. On January 22, 2025, Judge William C. Bryson granted Booking.com's motion for judgment as a matter of law. Ryanair appealed to the Third Circuit, and the appeal was terminated in August 2025 (docket, D. Del. No. 1:20-cv-01191).

AI training and fair use. In June 2025, two judges in the Northern District of California ruled on training AI models on books: in Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge William Alsup found training on lawfully bought books to be fair use but not keeping pirated copies, and the case later settled (docket, No. 3:24-cv-05417); in Kadrey v. Meta, Judge Vince Chhabria granted Meta summary judgment on the record before him. The AI side is covered in is AI scraping legal.