Amazon vs. Perplexity AI Lawsuit: Comet Injunction and Appeal

Amazon sued Perplexity AI in November 2025 over the startup’s Comet browser, alleging its AI shopping assistant illegally accessed Amazon customer accounts in violation of federal and California computer fraud laws. A federal judge granted Amazon a preliminary injunction in March 2026, but the Ninth Circuit quickly stayed that order, and the appeal remains pending after oral arguments in June 2026. The Amazon vs. Perplexity AI lawsuit has become the first major test of whether websites can block AI agents that users have authorized to shop on their behalf.

How the Fight Started

Perplexity launched Comet, an AI-powered browser built on Chromium, in July 2025 and rolled it out worldwide for free that October.{¹} Comet includes an AI Assistant that users can activate to browse sites, find products, compare prices, and move purchases toward checkout. On Amazon, it could search, add to cart, and proceed toward buying, guided by user instructions.{²}

The friction predates the complaint. Amazon first raised concerns in November 2024 over an earlier Perplexity feature called “Buy with Pro” that used Perplexity’s own Amazon accounts to make purchases; Perplexity disabled it. In August 2025, Amazon put technical barriers in place to block Comet. Perplexity said a routine software update restored access within 24 hours. Amazon called it a deliberate workaround.{³} On October 31, 2025, Amazon sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding Perplexity strip Amazon from Comet’s shopping capabilities.{¹}

What Amazon Is Claiming

Amazon filed suit on November 4, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case, Amazon.com Services LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc. (Case No. 3:25-cv-09514), went to Senior U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney.{⁴}

The complaint brings two causes of action: violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and violations of the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (California Penal Code § 502).{⁵} Both statutes prohibit unauthorized access to computer systems. Amazon framed Comet’s behavior as trespass, writing that “Perplexity’s trespass involves code rather than a lockpick” but is “no less unlawful.”{⁶}

The factual allegations cluster around four points. Amazon says Perplexity configured Comet to transmit the same user-agent string as Google Chrome, making its automated browsing look like a person using a regular browser. It says Perplexity released a software update in August 2025 specifically to evade the technical blocks Amazon had put in place. It says Comet operated inside password-protected customer accounts and sent private account data back to Perplexity’s servers for processing. And it says the automated traffic forced Amazon engineers to build new detection tools to keep non-human activity out of its advertising systems, which the company argued was necessary to meet contractual obligations to advertisers.{⁵}{⁷}

Amazon’s Conditions of Use, updated in May 2025, sit behind these claims. The terms prohibit “data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools” on Amazon services, and a dedicated Agent Terms section requires automated software to identify itself in HTTP requests, refrain from circumventing access controls, and stop accessing Amazon services when asked.{⁸}

Amazon asked the court to enjoin Comet from accessing the Amazon store through customer accounts and claimed damages over $260,000 for investigation and remediation.{⁵}

How Perplexity Is Defending Itself

Perplexity pushed back publicly the day the lawsuit surfaced. In a blog post titled “Bullying is not innovation,” the company accused Amazon of protecting ad revenue at the expense of consumer choice. CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote on social media that Perplexity would be “happy to work together with Amazon to figure out a win-win outcome,” but that “attempts to block our Comet Assistant on Amazon and hurt our users — we will have to stand up for them.”{⁹} The public argument was that Amazon cares more about “serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions” than about efficient shopping, and that the suit really targets a tool that lets shoppers bypass those ads.{¹}

In court, Perplexity’s legal defense turned on a different set of arguments. Declarations from VP of Business Dmitry Shevelenko and engineer Dzianis Yarats described Comet’s Assistant as user-activated, visually transparent about what it is doing, and unable to finalize a purchase without the user confirming payment. Perplexity told the court that “neither the Assistant nor the Comet browser ever transmits login credentials, payment information, browsing history, or private messages to Perplexity,” and that user credentials are stored locally on users’ devices. The company also characterized the August 2025 incident as a routine product update rather than a workaround.{²} More broadly, Perplexity argued that Comet acts as a delegated representative for users doing things they are already allowed to do themselves.{³}

The competition framing has some factual grounding. Amazon launched its own AI shopping chatbot, Rufus, in February 2024; it served over 300 million customers in 2025 and was credited with roughly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in that year’s fourth quarter. In April 2025, Amazon tested a “Buy For Me” agent that purchases products from other retailers’ websites on behalf of Amazon shoppers.{} Amazon’s retail team reportedly described “Buy For Me” as a “direct response to the threat posed by third-party agents that might divert traffic away from Amazon’s marketplace.” CEO Andy Jassy said on a late October 2025 earnings call that Amazon was “having conversations” and expected to eventually partner with third-party AI agents that could ensure a good customer experience.{¹}

The March 2026 Injunction

On March 9, 2026, Judge Chesney granted Amazon’s motion for a preliminary injunction, ordering Perplexity to stop Comet from accessing Amazon’s systems and to destroy all Amazon customer data its AI agents had obtained.{⁷}{¹⁰}

The judge found Amazon likely to succeed on both the CFAA and § 502 claims. The ruling leaned heavily on the Ninth Circuit’s 2016 decision in Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., which held that a platform can revoke a third party’s access even when users have shared their credentials. Because Amazon had revoked authorization through cease-and-desist notices and technical blocks and Perplexity kept accessing the site, the court concluded the access was likely unauthorized. The judge captured the distinction this way: Comet accessed Amazon accounts “with the Amazon user’s permission, but without authorization by Amazon.”{¹⁰}{³}

Judge Chesney cited “essentially undisputed evidence” that Amazon spent over $5,000 and significant employee time developing tools to block Comet, satisfying the loss threshold under the computer fraud statutes.{⁷} The court rejected Perplexity’s argument that blocking Comet would harm consumer choice and innovation, finding a stronger public interest in “preventing unauthorized access to computers.” The judge also denied Perplexity’s request that Amazon post a $1 billion bond, concluding the order did not threaten Perplexity’s entire business.{¹⁰}{³}

The order sidestepped several of the case’s biggest questions. It did not analyze whether AI agents should be treated differently from human users or standard browsers, whether a user’s delegation to an AI extends the user’s own authorization, or whether the CFAA’s definition of “loss” should be limited to technological harms after the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in Van Buren v. United States.

The Ninth Circuit Stay and Appeal

The injunction included a seven-day stay to give Perplexity time to appeal. On March 16, 2026, the Ninth Circuit granted an administrative stay, pausing the injunction while it considered the case and effectively letting Comet keep operating as before.{¹⁰}{¹¹}

The Knight First Amendment Institute and the Electronic Frontier Foundation both filed amicus briefs supporting Perplexity in April 2026.{¹²} The EFF argued that the CFAA is a 1986 anti-hacking statute that was never designed to let private companies police internet access, and pointed to the Ninth Circuit’s earlier ruling in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. for the proposition that publicly available web pages lack the kind of access gates the CFAA was meant to protect. The brief also argued that Perplexity itself never directly accessed Amazon’s servers, because Comet runs as a browser on the user’s own device, so the user is the one accessing the site.{¹³}

The Ninth Circuit heard oral argument on June 11, 2026. The three-judge panel was described as skeptical of Perplexity’s position, pressing on whether a user’s authorization should override Amazon’s terms of service.{¹⁴} At the same time, the panel voiced unease about stretching a decades-old statute to reach technology its drafters never imagined. Judge John Hinderaker said the CFAA was “not really built for these circumstances” and asked, “Does an AI agent ever have intent?” Judge Eric Tung offered a framing: “the user is giving the key to Perplexity, and Perplexity is then entering Amazon’s servers or computers. Much of this case turns on the proper analogy.” A panelist also raised concerns about the “unintended consequences” of affirming the district court.{¹⁵}{¹⁶}

The case has been submitted to the panel. No ruling has issued as of mid-2026.

Why the Outcome Matters

The core question is deceptively simple: when a user tells an AI tool to act on their behalf on a website, whose permission controls access, the user’s or the website’s?

If Amazon prevails, retailers, banks, travel platforms, and other sites could use the CFAA to block AI agents from interacting with logged-in user accounts, even when the user initiated the action.{¹⁰} If Perplexity wins, AI tools would face significantly less friction operating across the web on behalf of users, while platforms would lose some control over who and what interacts with their systems.

The precedents pull in different directions. The Supreme Court’s 2021 Van Buren ruling narrowed the CFAA’s “exceeds authorized access” provision to apply only when someone accesses off-limits areas, not when they misuse permitted access. The Ninth Circuit’s 2022 hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn decision held that scraping publicly available data without authentication gates does not violate the CFAA. Cutting the other way, Power Ventures found liability where a third party circumvented technical barriers to access Facebook accounts, and that case was the backbone of Judge Chesney’s order.{³} None was decided with AI agents in mind, and the Ninth Circuit’s eventual ruling will shape how agentic commerce operates for years.

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