Perplexity Just Won the Appeal Amazon’s Court Order Was Waiting On
Back in March, a federal court sided with Amazon in its lawsuit against Perplexity, ordering the AI company to destroy data its Comet browser had collected while shopping Amazon on users' behalf. Perplexity filed an appeal the very next day. That appeal has now been decided, and it went against Amazon.
What the Ninth Circuit Ruled
On August 4, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the injunction, finding Amazon unlikely to succeed on its core legal claim. The court's reasoning centered on a technical detail: Comet's Assistant sends screenshots from a user's own device to Perplexity's servers, which return navigation instructions back to that device. Perplexity's servers never talk directly to Amazon's. Because of that setup, the court held that it's the user, not Perplexity, who “accesses” Amazon's computers under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, comparing the AI agent to an ordinary browser rather than a hacking tool.
Amazon isn't accepting the result. On August 18, it petitioned for the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc, arguing the ruling strips website owners of their ability to control which AI agents can enter their systems in the first place.
Why This Matters More Than a Typical Appeal
This flips the framing of the original story. In March, Amazon looked like it had a workable legal tool to keep unauthorized AI agents off its platform. That tool just got taken away, at least for now, and the case returns to the district court for further proceedings on Amazon's remaining claims, including allegations that Perplexity violated Amazon's terms of service separately from the computer-access question.
Related reading: Amazon Now Advertises on ChatGPT But Still Won't Share Its Data
That earlier piece is worth revisiting in light of this ruling. Amazon has spent the past year running two tracks at once: aggressively blocking outside AI agents from accessing its own platform data while simultaneously buying ad placements on ChatGPT to redirect traffic back to Amazon on Amazon's own terms. This ruling weakens the legal foundation under the first track without touching the second.
Why Sellers Should Still Care
The underlying question hasn't changed since March: who controls access to the product listings, pricing data, and customer information sellers generate through their stores. What's changed is that Amazon's legal path to answering that question in its own favor just got harder.
If AI agents like Comet retain a durable right to browse and shop Amazon without the platform's cooperation, that's a real shift in who sits between a seller and a customer. The case isn't over, and Amazon's en banc petition or a possible Supreme Court appeal could still change the outcome. But for now, the precedent runs against platform owners trying to use hacking law to keep third-party AI shopping tools out.
