The Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc., No. 26-1444, on 4 August 2026. The court vacated a district court preliminary injunction that had restrained Perplexity AI from operating its Comet browser tool to access Amazon's website, and remanded for further proceedings consistent with the opinion. The case is at the preliminary-injunction stage; no final merits ruling has been issued.
The controlling statutes are the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, and California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (Penal Code § 502). Both statutes impose liability on a party that accesses a protected computer without authorisation. Perplexity's Comet browser includes an AI assistant that, when a user activates it, navigates to Amazon.com and transmits screenshots to Perplexity's servers for further instruction. The Ninth Circuit held that because the human user activated the assistant and directed the navigation, the statutory access was performed by the user using Perplexity as a tool, not by Perplexity directly.
Developers of AI agent tools and browser-automation products whose software navigates third-party websites at user direction can cite this ruling in defence of CFAA and equivalent state computer access claims. Website operators seeking to restrict AI-driven access must direct legal claims at users or pursue alternative theories, including breach of contract through Terms of Service, trespass to chattels, or copyright infringement. Authentication requirements, contractual access conditions, and robot exclusion protocols remain relevant to non-CFAA claims and should be reviewed by platform operators following this decision.
The Ninth Circuit's holding applies only to the preliminary-injunction threshold; the district court must still assess the merits of Amazon's CFAA and CDAFA claims on remand. The decision does not address whether Perplexity's receipt and analysis of screenshots from user sessions independently constitutes a separate computer access or gives rise to copyright claims. Other circuits have not addressed the user-agent attribution question in the AI assistant context, leaving a potential circuit split open.
Licentium may advise on legal issues arising from AI agent deployment, automated access to digital platforms, and related regulatory compliance. We work with partner counsel for litigation assessment and jurisdictional analysis. Work we undertake includes computer access law analysis, AI agent compliance reviews, Terms of Service and acceptable use policy drafting, and platform-operator enforcement strategy.
Source: Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc., No. 26-1444 (9th Cir. Aug. 4, 2026)