Ninth Circuit Vacates Amazon's Injunction Against Perplexity's Comet AI Shopping Agent — First Federal Appellate Ruling Holds the Shopper, Not the AI Company, Is the One 'Accessing' Amazon Under the CFAA
The first federal appeals court decision on whether AI shopping agents may legally browse and buy on a retailer's site went against Amazon. On August 4, 2026, the Ninth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction Amazon had won against Perplexity AI's Comet browser assistant, in Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc., No. 26-1444. Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. held that on the record before the court it is the human user — not Perplexity — who 'accesses' Amazon's computers for purposes of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, because the agent operates through the user's own browser: the browser talks to Amazon's servers, while the agent takes screenshots, sends them to Perplexity for processing, and sends navigation instructions back. The panel stopped at that first element and did not reach the rest of Amazon's CFAA claim. Amazon keeps its non-statutory tools — terms of service enforcement and technical measures — but loses federal computer-crime law as a lever against agent developers. For sellers, this is not a Seller Central rule change and requires no action today; it is a signal about how much third-party agent traffic may end up reaching their detail pages.
Real-World Impact
The injunction that has now been vacated was in force from March 9, 2026 to August 4, 2026 — just under five months in which Amazon held a court order restricting Perplexity's Comet agent. Because the appeal came from a preliminary injunction, the Ninth Circuit's conclusion is a likelihood-of-success assessment on the current record, not a final merits ruling.
Key Points
- Decided August 4, 2026: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction in Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc., No. 26-1444, in an opinion by Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr.
- Holding: on the record before the court, the user — not Perplexity — is the party who 'accesses' Amazon's computers under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, because Perplexity's servers never contacted Amazon's systems directly
- The mechanics mattered: the Comet assistant runs in the user's own browser, which communicates with Amazon; the agent takes screenshots of that browser view, sends them to Perplexity for processing, and receives navigation instructions in return
- The panel applied the rule of lenity, reasoning that a broader reading of 'access' could expose individual users to criminal liability and stray from the statute's anti-hacking purpose
- Amazon had sued under both the federal CFAA and California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act; the panel resolved the appeal on the threshold 'access' question and did not reach the remaining elements
- Procedural history: the US District Court for the Northern District of California granted Amazon the preliminary injunction on March 9, 2026, and the Ninth Circuit vacated it on appeal roughly five months later
- Amazon retains other enforcement routes the opinion expressly identifies — terms of service restrictions and technological measures — and other legal theories were not foreclosed; what it lost is the CFAA as a weapon against the agent's developer
- The court limited its holding to the facts presented and did not attempt to set a general legal regime for autonomous software, leaving open that different facts could show a developer exercising enough control to count as 'access'
- This is described by the firms tracking it as the first federal appellate decision addressing whether AI agents acting for users may legally access online platforms
What You Should Do Now
- 1Treat this as a signal, not a task: there is no Seller Central setting to change and no deadline attached to this ruling
- 2Assume more of your detail page traffic will come from agents reading structured content rather than humans scanning images — keep titles, bullets, attributes and A+ content factually complete and machine-readable
- 3Watch for Amazon responding through the levers the court left it: terms of service changes and technical blocking, which could land as Conditions of Use or Business Solutions Agreement updates rather than as a lawsuit
- 4If you run your own automation against Amazon, keep complying with Amazon's existing automated-tool and AI agent rules in the Business Solutions Agreement — this ruling does not loosen them