The tables have turned in a high-stakes copyright battle that could reshape how the web works. SerpApi, a scraping tool provider hit with a lawsuit by Google in December, just filed a motion to dismiss that flips the narrative entirely. The company argues Google has no copyright claim to its search results because the tech giant built its empire by scraping and indexing everyone else's content. It's a bold defense that strikes at the heart of how search engines operate and who owns the data they aggregate.
Google thought it had an open-and-shut case. In December, the search behemoth sued SerpApi for what it called systematic theft of its search results, claiming the scraper had violated copyright law by using deceptive tactics to harvest data at an "astonishing scale." But SerpApi isn't backing down. In a motion to dismiss filed Friday, the company turns Google's argument on its head with a provocative claim: you can't copyright what you scraped in the first place.
The filing, detailed in SerpApi's own blog post, argues that Google's search results are essentially compilations of other people's content. "Google's entire business model is built on the backs of others who posted 'the world's information,'" the motion states. It's a philosophical argument wrapped in legal language, one that questions whether aggregated data can ever truly belong to the aggregator.
At stake is more than just one lawsuit. The battle between Google and SerpApi reflects a broader tension in tech over who controls access to web data. SerpApi offers developers tools to programmatically access search results from Google and other platforms, essentially providing an API where none officially exists. For years, the company has operated in a gray area, serving customers who need structured search data for research, price monitoring, and competitive analysis.
Google's original complaint accused SerpApi of bypassing SearchGuard, its anti-scraping protection system designed to detect and block automated access. The search giant claimed SerpApi used rotating IP addresses, browser spoofing, and other techniques to evade detection. According to , Google alleged the scraping happened at industrial scale, with SerpApi processing millions of queries.
