By Slobodan Manic
Publication Date: 2026-06-01 00:56:00
Amazon sued Perplexity over its Comet browser shopping on Amazon under user authorization. On March 10, 2026, a federal judge in the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction blocking Comet from accessing Amazon’s logged-in pages. Roughly a week later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals paused the injunction pending Perplexity’s appeal. On May 8, 2026, Perplexity filed its appellate brief, calling Amazon’s Computer Fraud and Abuse Act theory “a fundamental misfit” for an AI agent that visits under explicit user authorization. Oral arguments are scheduled for June 11, 2026, in Seattle.
The case is the first major legal test of agent-as-visitor rights in the United States. The question at the center of it is who counts as an authorized visitor when a human delegates the visit to an AI agent. The answer at the Ninth Circuit will set the precedent for every retailer, marketplace, booking platform, and SaaS website facing the same question, and most of them will be facing it within the next 12 months.
What Happened, March Through May
The case moved through three distinct phases in eight weeks.
In early 2026, Amazon filed suit against Perplexity in the Northern District of California. Comet, Perplexity’s AI-powered browser, can log into a user’s Amazon account using the user’s stored credentials, browse products on the user’s behalf, and complete purchases through Amazon’s checkout flow. Amazon’s complaint argued that this constitutes…