Reddit Inc v. SerpApi LLC, No. 1:25-cv-08736 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is Reddit's suit against Perplexity AI and three data-scraping firms over the acquisition of Reddit content for AI systems. On July 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer rejected most of Perplexity's motion to dismiss, allowing claims that the defendants unlawfully circumvented protective measures, together with a conspiracy claim, to proceed, while dismissing some secondary claims (Source: reuters.com).
| Field | Detail | |
|---|---|---|
| Plaintiff | Reddit, Inc. | |
| Defendants | [[companies/perplexity\ | Perplexity AI, Inc.]]; SerpApi LLC (Texas); Oxylabs (Lithuania); AWMProxy (Russia) |
| Court | U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y. (Judge Paul Engelmayer) | |
| Case number | 1:25-cv-08736 | |
| Status | Active; motion to dismiss largely denied July 31, 2026 |
Claims
The claims that survived the motion to dismiss concern circumvention rather than copying as such: that Perplexity and the three scraping firms unlawfully circumvented the protective measures Reddit uses to control automated access to its content, and that they did so in concert. The conspiracy claim was allowed to proceed alongside the circumvention claims; some secondary claims were dismissed, and the reporting does not enumerate which (Source: reuters.com).
The structure of the case — a platform suing an AI company together with the intermediaries that supplied it — distinguishes it from the training-data copyright suits tracked at AI Copyright Litigation — Analysis, where the dispute is over the use made of the material rather than the means of obtaining it. Naming Oxylabs, AWMProxy and SerpApi as co-defendants puts the scraping-services layer directly at issue.
Procedural history
Reddit filed in the Southern District of New York in 2025. Perplexity moved to dismiss; on July 31, 2026 Judge Engelmayer rejected most of the motion, and the case proceeds on the circumvention and conspiracy claims (Source: reuters.com).
Open questions
- The specific statutory bases for the surviving circumvention claims, and which secondary claims were dismissed, are not stated in the available reporting; the opinion itself has not been retrieved.
- The exact filing date within 2025 is not established by the available source.
Relationships
- related: Perplexity — the principal defendant.
- related: Amazon v. Perplexity AI — a separate suit against the same defendant over agent access to a platform, on unauthorized-access theories.
- related: AI Copyright Litigation — Analysis — the wider set of AI training-data disputes, from which this case differs in targeting the means of collection.
- related: Training Data Walls — the access-control regime the circumvention claims turn on.