Google Accused of Web Scraping in Lawsuit Against Web Scraper

Google Faces Legal Battle with SerpApi Over Web Scraping

SerpApi, a company specializing in web scraping tools, is pushing back against Google’s copyright lawsuit, accusing it of harvesting search results on a massive scale. In a recent motion to dismiss, SerpApi contends that Google does not have a copyright claim on its search results, stating that Google’s search engine is built on information provided by others.

Last December, Google filed a lawsuit against SerpApi, alleging that the smaller company violated the Copyright Act by using deceptive methods to access and scrape Google’s search results. Google also claims that SerpApi bypassed its anti-scraping SearchGuard feature. However, SerpApi’s defense argues that Google is a significant scraper itself and that SerpApi is simply following Google’s own practices.

SerpApi, like Google but on a smaller scale, uses automated tools to scrape data from public websites, which it then organizes and provides to its customers in a relevant and useful manner. This mirrors Google’s own methods.

SerpApi asserts that Google does not assert ownership over its search results and that the scraped information from public websites is not protected by copyright. The company also argues that it did not violate the Copyright Act by bypassing SearchGuard, as the feature is intended to protect Google’s business interests rather than copyrighted content.