A US appeals court overturns a ruling that had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its agentic shopping tools on Amazon's platform
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday overturned a ruling that had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its AI-powered agentic shopping tools on Amazon's (AMZN.O) platform.
Context & Ripple Effects
The dispute began with Amazon's computer-fraud lawsuit and cease-and-desist demand over Comet making purchases for users. A district court then ordered Perplexity to halt the browser's purchasing activity and destroy Amazon data, before the appeals court put that block on hold in March.
The latest ruling removes the temporary bar rather than resolving the underlying Amazon-Perplexity conflict. It matters because the case tests whether a marketplace can use litigation to control third-party AI agents acting for shoppers.
First-order effects
- Perplexity regains the ability to use its agentic shopping tools on Amazon's platform while the dispute continues, reversing the operational constraint imposed by the preliminary ruling.
- Amazon loses the temporary court-backed restriction it had won against Comet's purchasing activity and must pursue its claims without that immediate restraint.
Second-order effects
- Other AI shopping-agent providers gain a closely watched appellate outcome against a marketplace operator's attempt to restrict agent access, while Amazon's position as the transaction gatekeeper is less protected in the near term.
- Merchant and shopper interactions routed through Perplexity can resume under the appellate ruling, increasing pressure on Amazon to distinguish between user-authorized buying agents and access it regards as improper.
Third-order effects
- If similar rulings hold, agentic commerce will be shaped less by a marketplace's unilateral access controls and more by courts' treatment of user-authorized agents, pushing platforms toward clearer permissioning rules.
- The Amazon-Perplexity case may become an early boundary-setting fight over whether commerce platforms can remain the exclusive distribution gatekeepers as AI agents transact for users.
The trend: Agentic commerce is moving toward a contest over who controls marketplace access when an AI system acts on a shopper's behalf.