Perplexity has overturned a preliminary injunction that had barred the AI shopping tool in its Comet browser from accessing Amazon, according to Bloomberg.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Amazon’s claim under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was unlikely to succeed, finding that Comet requires user direction to access Amazon and that the user, not Perplexity, was accessing Amazon’s servers.
The court said Amazon would need to show that Perplexity intentionally accessed a protected computer without authorization, obtained information from it, and caused losses of at least $5,000 during a one-year period to support a CFAA claim.
The opinion also said an injunction against conduct that likely does not violate the CFAA or California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act would not be in the public interest.
The court added that the potential harm to Amazon from allowing Perplexity to offer Comet’s shopping features did not justify an injunction. “We respectfully disagree with today’s decision on the preliminary injunction,” Amazon said in a statement. “We remain confident in our case and are evaluating our next steps.”
The dispute began publicly in November 2025, when Amazon sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it block its AI browser from accessing Amazon’s online store.
Amazon said the companies had agreed in 2024 to pause agentic shopping, but that Perplexity later restored the feature by disguising Comet’s AI bot as a normal Chrome browser.
Amazon sued Perplexity in March 2026 and won a temporary injunction shortly afterward.
The appeals court ruling lifts that injunction but does not end the case. Amazon can seek a rehearing or ask the Supreme Court to review the decision, and the lawsuit will continue in federal court in San Francisco.
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