SerpApi moves to dismiss Google scraping lawsuit

SerpApi is asking a federal court to dismiss Google’s lawsuit, arguing the company is misusing copyright law to restrict access to public search results.

• The motion was filed Feb. 20, according to a blog post by SerpApi CEO and founder Julien Khaleghy.
• Google sued SerpApi in December, alleging it bypassed technical protections to scrape and resell content from Google Search.

The details: SerpApi argues Google is improperly invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to Khaleghy:

• The DMCA protects copyrighted works, not websites or ad businesses.
• Google doesn’t own the underlying content displayed in search results.
• Accessing publicly visible pages isn’t “circumvention” under the statute.

Google’s complaint alleged SerpApi:

• Circumvented bot-detection and crawling controls.
• Used rotating bot identities and large bot networks.
• Scraped licensed content from Search features, including images and…