Federal Judge Dismisses Google's DMCA Case Against SerpApi, Ruling Search Results Data Uncopyrighted
TLDR
A federal judge dismissed Google's DMCA anti-circumvention lawsuit against SerpApi, ruling that publicly accessible search results and snippets are not copyrighted works Google can legally protect.
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U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has thrown out Google's December lawsuit against SerpApi over scraping its search results. As reported by SERoundtable, the court found that Section 1201 of the DMCA does not protect uncopyrighted data like URLs and snippets, and that Google failed to demonstrate it had authorization from copyright holders to control access to third-party content displayed in knowledge panels. Google was given 21 days to refile if it can show such authorization, though the judge ruled categorically that plain aggregated search results cannot be protected under copyright law.