SerpApi, a company that offers web scraping tools, is fighting a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google that accuses it of vacuuming search results “on a staggering scale.” In a motion to dismiss filed Friday, SerpApi argues that Google does not copyright its search results, saying the engine is built “on the backs of others who have posted ‘information from around the world’.”
In December, Google sued SerpApi, claiming the smaller scraper violated copyright law by using “deceptive means” to access and scrape search results. Google also mitigates that SerpApi found a way to bypass its SearchGuard anti-scraping feature. But SerpApi’s motion to dismiss claims that Google is “the biggest scraper on the planet” and that SerpApi is just doing “what Google does to everyone else:”
Like Google – but on a much smaller scale – SerpApi uses “automated means” to shred public web pages, which it then synthesizes and makes available to its own customers in a way it believes they will find relevant and useful. Of course, that’s exactly what Google is doing.
SerpApi claims that Google “does not claim ownership” of its search results and that “the information it obtains from public websites is not protected by copyright-based access controls.” The company also says it didn’t violate copyright law by bypassing SearchGuard because the tool is said to only protect Google’s business — not licensed content.