A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court order that blocked Perplexity's AI-powered shopping tools from operating on Amazon, handing the startup a significant early victory in a case that could shape the legal landscape for autonomous AI agents and online commerce.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Amazon is unlikely to succeed on its claim that Perplexity violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a federal anti-hacking statute increasingly invoked in disputes over automated access to online platforms. The court found that Amazon's own users—not Perplexity—accessed the platform through Comet, Perplexity's agentic AI browser capable of browsing websites, logging into accounts, and completing purchases on a user's behalf.

"To succeed on a claim under the CFAA, a plaintiff must show that the defendant intentionally accessed a computer, without authorization or exceeding authorized access, thereby obtained information from any protected computer, and that there was loss to one or more persons during any one-year period aggregating at least $5,000 in value," the ruling stated.

The CFAA has been a central legal battleground over who may access online services and under what terms. In its 2021 Van Buren v. United States decision, the Supreme Court narrowed the statute's reach, holding that exceeding authorized access does not include violations of use restrictions. The Ninth Circuit's own 2022 ruling in hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn found that scraping publicly available data did not violate the CFAA—a precedent that has shaped how courts evaluate automated access cases.

The dispute originated in November, when Amazon sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter before subsequently filing suit. Amazon alleged that Perplexity's Comet browser disguised automated traffic as a standard web browser, violated Amazon's terms of service, and accessed customer accounts without authorization.

Perplexity countered that Comet operated solely with users' explicit permission, using credentials stored on their own devices. The company accused Amazon of attempting to restrict consumer choice in AI assistants.

In March, a federal judge granted Amazon a preliminary injunction, finding the company had presented strong evidence that Perplexity likely violated federal and California computer fraud laws by accessing password-protected Amazon accounts without Amazon's consent. That order temporarily barred Comet from conducting shopping activities on Amazon while the underlying lawsuit proceeded.

The case unfolds as major technology companies race to deploy agentic AI products—tools that can navigate websites, fill forms, and complete transactions autonomously. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have all introduced agent-like features, making the legal boundaries around automated platform access a pressing question for the industry. Platforms including Amazon have argued that unauthorized automated access can strain infrastructure, compromise security, and undermine business models, while AI companies contend that user-directed agents represent an evolution of consumer browsing.

While the case remains ongoing, the Ninth Circuit's ruling provides an early signal of how courts may approach legal questions surrounding AI agents that take actions on behalf of users—an issue with potentially broad implications for the future of agentic AI and e-commerce. The appeals court's decision dissolves the preliminary injunction, allowing Comet to operate on Amazon while the underlying litigation continues.

The court's decision is available in full here.