A federal court just told Amazon that its legal strategy against Perplexity has a significant flaw. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the injunction that blocked Perplexity’s Comet browser from accessing Amazon’s online store, ruling that Amazon’s core legal argument doesn’t actually hold up.
The case centers on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA. Amazon’s lawsuit claimed that Perplexity violated this law by having its AI shopping agent access Amazon’s servers without authorization. But the appeals court drew a clear line: because Comet requires a user to direct it before it does anything on Amazon, it’s the user accessing Amazon’s servers, not Perplexity itself. That distinction matters enormously. For a CFAA claim to stick, Amazon needs to prove intentional unauthorized access, that information was obtained from a protected computer, and that damages exceeded $5,000 over a one-year period. The court found Amazon’s case didn’t clear that bar.
This goes back to November 2025, when Amazon sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter demanding it block Comet from interacting with Amazon’s store. Amazon alleged the two companies had already agreed to pause agentic shopping features in 2024, but that Perplexity quietly re-enabled them by disguising Comet’s bot as a standard Chrome browser. Amazon filed a formal lawsuit in March 2026 and was granted a temporary injunction shortly after. That injunction is now gone.
Still, Perplexity hasn’t won the war. The appeals court ruling only removes the injunction. It does not resolve the underlying lawsuit, which continues in San Francisco federal court. Amazon also has options: it can request a rehearing from the Ninth Circuit or escalate to the Supreme Court. In a statement, Amazon said it “respectfully disagrees” with the decision and is “evaluating next steps,” which signals this isn’t over.
The broader context here is worth paying attention to. Agentic AI browsers like Comet are built to act on behalf of users, and that means they will inevitably interact with platforms that haven’t consented to that kind of access. Amazon, which runs one of the world’s largest e-commerce operations, has an obvious interest in controlling how AI agents interact with its storefront. Perplexity, meanwhile, is trying to position Comet as a genuine shopping alternative to Amazon’s own ecosystem. This is the same tension playing out across AI agents broadly, and this case is one of the first to get real legal traction. How the San Francisco court eventually rules could shape the boundaries of what AI agents are legally allowed to do on the open web.
