Appeals court lifts Amazon’s ban on Perplexity’s AI shopping tools

Briefing

On August 4, 2026, Reuters reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a lower-court order that had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its AI-powered agentic shopping tools on Amazon’s platform. Coverage syndicated by outlets such as MarketScreener and CNA carries the same wire: Amazon was unlikely to succeed on its claim that Perplexity’s AI agents violated federal computer-hacking law.

The dispute is novel for agentic AI: Amazon sued Perplexity in November, alleging covert access to private customer accounts via the Comet browser and associated AI agent that can log in and place orders on a user’s behalf. A California federal judge had blocked Perplexity in March, finding “strong evidence” of a CFAA violation. The Ninth Circuit vacated that preliminary injunction.

“We respectfully disagree with today’s decision on the preliminary injunction. We remain confident in our case and are evaluating our next steps.”

Legal analyses of the opinion emphasize the court’s “access” holding: when a user tasks a Perplexity agent on Amazon.com, it is the user who accessed Amazon’s computers with help from the Assistant — not Perplexity as a statutory “person” accessing the system. Cooley’s summary notes other theories (including terms-of-service claims) may still remain available even if CFAA/CDAFA injunction theories weaken.

Because Reuters’ permanent story URL can rotate behind paywalls and syndication, we point primary readers to the Google News cluster for the Reuters headline and to full-text wire reprints plus secondary legal explainers in the links below.