Federal Court Rejects Google’s DMCA Suit Against SerpApi
A U.S. District Court in Northern California has dismissed Google’s attempt to leverage the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against data provider SerpApi. The ruling strikes down the tech giant’s bid to regulate access to public search results, citing a fundamental lack of copyright protection for non-original content.
The court’s decision, issued July 20, 2026, effectively bars Google from claiming statutory damages for the scraping of search results that lack unique, copyrighted material. In a sharp rebuke of the company’s legal strategy, the court noted that Google failed to establish a plausible DMCA violation, rendering the suit’s central premise legally hollow. SerpApi CEO Julien Khaleghy previously highlighted the absurdity of the claims, pointing out that Google’s interpretation of statutory damages could theoretically exceed the total U.S. GDP.
While this represents a significant win for open data advocates, the legal battle is not entirely over. The court granted Google a 21-day window to amend its complaint, but only regarding a narrow subset of claims involving specific copyrighted snippets from Google’s Knowledge Panels. For now, the ruling serves as a major check on attempts to use copyright law as a gatekeeping mechanism for public information.
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