Ninth Circuit vacates Amazon injunction against Perplexity AI agent

# Ninth Circuit Vacates Amazon Preliminary Injunction Against Perplexity AI

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against Perplexity AI on August 4, 2026, fundamentally reshaping liability for AI agents that access third-party websites. The appellate court held that when an AI assistant acts on a user's explicit direction, the user—not the AI developer—accesses the target computer system under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030) and California Penal Code § 502 American Bar Association.

The case, *Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc.*, No. 26-1444, originated in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where a judge had granted Amazon's request to block Perplexity's AI shopping agent from accessing Amazon's e-commerce platform. Amazon alleged that Perplexity's assistant was scraping product data and pricing information without authorization, violating computer-fraud statutes.

The Ninth Circuit's decision centered on a narrow but consequential question: who bears legal responsibility for unauthorized computer access when an AI agent executes instructions from a human user? The court concluded that the user's intentional direction to the agent to retrieve data constitutes the "access" prohibited by law, placing liability on the person directing the agent rather than on Perplexity itself Economic Times.

Implications for AI Agent Liability

The ruling creates a clear doctrinal split: AI companies that build agents for information retrieval or commercial actions face reduced liability exposure when users independently direct those agents to access third-party systems. However, the decision does not eliminate liability entirely for developers—courts may still impose responsibility if evidence shows the AI company designed its agent to circumvent access controls, mask origin, or evade detection.

The preliminary-injunction record, which formed the basis of the appellate review, focused on whether Amazon demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm ABA. By vacating the injunction, the Ninth Circuit signaled skepticism about Amazon's ability to establish that Perplexity AI itself "accessed" Amazon's computers under the statute.

Market Impact

The decision removes a significant regulatory cloud over AI shopping agents and autonomous information-retrieval tools. Perplexity's Comet agent and similar products that aggregate price data, product reviews, and availability across e-commerce platforms no longer face an outright ban in the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Hawaii, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands Agentry.

The ruling does not address whether Amazon might pursue an appeal on the merits or file suit under other theories, such as breach of terms of service or trademark dilution.