On July 20, 2026, a US federal court dismissed Google's copyright lawsuit against SerpApi. The judge ruled that stopping automated tools from reaching public search results, when those results hold no copyrighted material, is not the kind of circumvention the DMCA was written to punish. If your team relies on rank tracking or an API that pulls search data, this is a decision worth understanding.
How the case started
Google filed the suit in December 2025. It accused SerpApi of getting around a piece of anti-scraping technology that Google calls SearchGuard, then collecting search results and reselling them to customers. SerpApi is one of several services that let developers and marketers query Google results programmatically instead of checking rankings by hand.
What the court actually ruled
The court granted SerpApi's motion to dismiss. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects technical measures that guard copyrighted works. The judge found that ordinary public search results are not copyrighted works in the way the statute requires, so blocking a scraper from reaching them is not the same as bypassing protection on a film, a song, or a piece of software. The general claims were dismissed without leave to amend, which means Google cannot refile that part of the case in the same court.
What is still open
Not every claim was closed. A narrower set of allegations about Knowledge Panel images was dismissed with leave to amend. Google has 21 days to refile that portion with a stronger argument. Knowledge Panels can contain images that carry their own copyright, so the court left room for Google to try again on that specific point. The broad theory that scraping search results breaks the DMCA did not survive, while the image question stayed alive.
It helps to keep the scope in view. This is a single district-court ruling. It is not a decision from an appeals court, and it does not settle the law across the United States. Another judge could weigh the same facts differently, and Google may still pursue the image claims or appeal. You can read the full report at Search Engine Journal.
What this means for Thai marketers and SEO teams
Rank tracking sits at the center of most SEO reporting. Whether you monitor keyword positions for a Bangkok ecommerce store or track visibility for a national brand, the numbers usually come from tools that read public search results at scale. A ruling that treats scraping of non-copyrighted public results as something other than an automatic DMCA violation gives those tools a bit more legal footing.
The practical guidance for a Thai marketing team does not change much this week. Keep using reputable rank-tracking and SERP-data providers, and pay attention to their terms of service and how they handle data. If you are reviewing your own reporting stack, this is a reasonable moment to check where your ranking data comes from and how stable that source is. A structured SEO audit is a good place to look at the tools feeding your dashboards.
For teams building a long-term program, the infrastructure behind everyday SEO reporting looks a little more durable after this ruling. It does not remove risk, and it does not change how you approach SEO in Thailand, but it lowers one source of uncertainty around the data you already depend on.
Frequently asked questions
Does this mean scraping Google is now legal everywhere?
No. The ruling covers one case in one US district court and turns on the DMCA's specific definition of a technical protection measure. It does not grant blanket permission to scrape, and it does not speak to Thai or other national laws.
Will my rank-tracking tool stop working?
There is no sign that it will. The decision, if anything, supports the model that many SERP-data tools use. The remaining image claims are narrow and do not affect standard keyword-position tracking.
Should we switch SEO tools because of this?
Not on the strength of one ruling. Choose tools on data quality, coverage, and reliability, then revisit the legal picture as the case develops.
The takeaway
For now, the sensible move is to keep reporting as usual and watch how Google responds within its 21-day window. If you want a clearer view of the data behind your own rankings, the team at Relevant Audience can help you review it and build a reporting setup you can trust.
