• by Wendy Davis , August 4, 2026

A federal appellate panel on Tuesday lifted an injunction that banned Perplexity's shopping agent, Comet, from Amazon.

"An injunction would impair consumer choice and needlessly limit development of a nascent technology," 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Circuit Judge Milan Smith  wrote in a 21-page opinion joined by two other judges.

The decision reversed a ruling issued in March by U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney in the Northern District of California.

She said Amazon was likely to prove that the artificial intelligence company violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- a 1986 anti-hacking law -- by accessing Amazon users' accounts with their permission, but without Amazon's authorization.

That Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, introduced soon after the movie "War Games" came out, includes provisions that prohibit companies from accessing other businesses' web servers without authorization.

The 9th Circuit judges specifically ruled that Perplexity did not "access" Amazon's site, and therefore Amazon was unlikely to succeed with its claim that Perplexity violated the anti-hacking law.

"It is the user who 'accesses' Amazon’s computers, with the help of the Assistant to carry out specific acts on Amazon.com," Smith wrote. "To be sure, Perplexity may receive screenshots of the user’s browser and may communicate instructions to the Assistant. But those activities, by themselves, do not mean that Perplexity has 'accessed' (gained entry) to Amazon’s servers."

The ruling comes in a battle dating to November, when Amazon alleged that Perplexity's Comet browser shopped for users and made purchases on their behalf -- despite Amazon's attempt to implement technological blocks, and its demand that Perplexity cease and desist.

Chesney sided with Amazon and issued an injunction against Perplexity. The order banned Perplexity's shopping agent from Amazon.com, and directing Perplexity to destroy data obtained by Comet.

Perplexity appealed to the 9th Circuit, which paused the injunction while it considered the case.

Among other arguments, the artificial intelligence company argued to the 9th Circuit that users were the ones who accessed Amazon.

"A Comet user accessing Amazon from her own computer is no more equivalent to Perplexity accessing Amazon than a Safari user accessing Amazon from her own computer is equivalent to Apple accessing Amazon," Perplexity argued to the appellate judges.

Amazon countered that users should be viewed as mere intermediaries between Perplexity and Amazon.com.

"Because Perplexity’s servers instruct its Comet AI agent to purposefully navigate the Amazon Store through a user’s computer, it can no more disclaim access than an arsonist could say, 'I didn’t send that mail bomb, the postman did'," Amazon said in a written filing with the 9th Circuit.

The appellate judges said in their ruling that imposing liability on Perplexity "would require a novel interpretation far afield" from the purpose of the anti-hackindigital

The dispute drew the interest of numerous outside groups, including digital-rights advocates and the company Mozilla, which sided with Perplexity, and news organizations that sided with Amazon.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla and others argued in a friend-of-the-court brief that Chesney's interpretation of the anti-hacking law is "antithetical to foundational principles of the open internet."

But the news industry organization Digital Content Next argued that publishers "should not be forced to open their 'gates' to AI agents."

An Amazon spokesperson said the company disagrees with the 9th Circuit's decision.

"We remain confident in our case and are evaluating our next steps," the spokesperson said. 

A Perplexity spokesperson said the company "will continue to fight for the right of internet users" to choose whatever artificial intelligence they want.