Overview
- The Ninth Circuit ruled on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, that a March preliminary injunction blocking Perplexity’s Comet shopping agent should be vacated and returned to the Northern District of California for further proceedings.
- The three-judge panel found, on the current record, that Amazon’s users — not Perplexity — ‘accessed’ Amazon’s systems when using Comet, so Amazon is unlikely to prevail on its CFAA and California access-law claims at this stage.
- Judges said the Comet assistant functions as a user-operated tool because it relays screenshots and navigation commands to Perplexity rather than Perplexity directly logging into Amazon, and the court limited its decision to the factual record before it.
- Amazon said it ‘respectfully disagrees’ and is weighing an en banc rehearing or Supreme Court appeal, while Perplexity said it will continue to defend users’ right to choose AI assistants.
- The ruling is one of the first federal appellate treatments of agentic AI and could shape how platforms use contract terms or other legal theories to control automated agents and how innovators build browsing and shopping tools.