A US judge largely denies Perplexity and three data scraper firms' bid to dismiss Reddit's lawsuit over claims of copyright law violations under DMCA
Context & Ripple Effects
Reddit’s case grew out of its [[a:891726|2025 suit accusing Perplexity and scraping vendors of taking Reddit data through Google results]]. The court’s largely unsuccessful dismissal bid means the dispute can move beyond the threshold pleading stage.
The decision arrives amid uneven copyright outcomes for AI and data-access disputes: the main claims in the New York Times’ case against OpenAI also survived dismissal, while a recent search-results scraping case reached a different result on copyright protection.
First-order effects
- Reddit can continue pursuing most of its DMCA claims against Perplexity and the three scraping companies, rather than having the case ended at the outset.
- Perplexity and the other defendants now face continued litigation over the alleged acquisition and use of Reddit material, with the surviving claims defining the immediate scope of the case.
Second-order effects
- AI-answer providers and data intermediaries that rely on third-party routes to obtain web content will have added reason to scrutinize whether those routes create DMCA exposure.
- Content platforms may view enforcement against downstream scraping arrangements as a more viable complement to technical access controls and direct licensing.
Third-order effects
- If similar claims continue to survive early motions, the legal boundary around AI data supply chains may be shaped not only by model training, but by how intermediaries obtain and transmit source content.
- The contrast with the SerpApi ruling on plain and aggregated search results suggests outcomes may turn on the specific content and alleged conduct, leaving a fragmented legal framework rather than a single scraping rule.
The trend: AI companies and content platforms are increasingly testing whether copyright and anti-circumvention law can govern the intermediaries that feed data into AI products.