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✓ data: federal court records from CourtListener and GovInfo, bill records from LegiScan and Open States · checked 2026-10-02 · method · download the data
Not legal advice. This page summarises public court and legislative records for research and journalism. It is not legal advice, and it doesn’t say whether any particular scraping project is lawful. Claim tags, case groupings and bill tiers are ProxyPicker’s classification, not a court’s. Rulings can be appealed, reversed or settled after the date above. If you need advice, talk to a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
Who gets sued for web scraping, under which laws, and how do the cases end? We tracked the US federal lawsuits since 2020 that are clearly about scraping or automated data collection, and tied every one to a real court docket. We read the court opinions to see which claims were brought and what the judges decided. We also searched every US state legislature and Congress for bills that deal with scraping or web crawlers, including the new wave aimed at AI crawlers.
Every case below links to its docket and the court documents we relied on. Anything we couldn’t confirm from a court or legislative record is marked.
- federal scraping cases, 2020–2025 17
- with a CFAA claim 9
- with a contract / ToS claim 8
- scraping & crawler bills 11
- enacted 1
The headline numbers
- 17 federal cases filed from 2020 to 2025 are clearly about web scraping. Filings peaked in 2023 with 5 cases (Meta v. Bright Data, Meta v. Voyager Labs, X Corp. v. Bright Data, X Corp. v. CCDH and Air Canada v. Localhost). There were 4 in 2025, and we found none filed so far in 2026. 10 of the 17 are in the Northern District of California, home to Meta, X, Google and many scrapers’ customers.
- The anti-hacking law is still the most common claim. 9 of the 17 cases include a claim under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), even after the Supreme Court narrowed it in Van Buren (2021) and the Ninth Circuit’s 2022 hiQ v. LinkedIn ruling. 8 include breach of a website’s terms of service, and 8 use a state computer-crime law such as California’s Penal Code §502.
- Defendants beat the site owner’s main claim in 5 of the 17 cases. Courts rejected the site owner’s main contract or computer-access theory in Meta v. Bright Data, X Corp. v. Bright Data, X Corp. v. CCDH, Ryanair v. Booking and Amazon v. Perplexity. In Ryanair’s case a jury had found Booking.com liable under the CFAA and awarded $5,000, but the judge set the verdict aside in January 2025. In Amazon v. Perplexity the loss came at the preliminary-injunction stage: Amazon won an injunction in March 2026, and the Ninth Circuit vacated it in August.
- Site owners got injunctions in 4. Southwest v. Kiwi.com, Chegg v. Doe, Meta v. BrandTotal and Cox Automotive v. Super Dispatch ended with a court order against the scraper: two preliminary injunctions, one stipulated permanent injunction and one consent permanent injunction. Three of the four involved logged-in areas, fake accounts or paywalled content (Chegg, BrandTotal and Cox Automotive).
- The newest cases add copyright and DMCA claims. 3 of the 4 cases filed in 2025 rely on the DMCA’s anti-circumvention rule (§1201) or copyright: CDK Global v. Tekion, Reddit v. SerpApi and Google v. SerpApi. For the two SerpApi cases this comes from the docket’s cause-of-action code, because no opinion has been published yet. Defendants now include AI companies (Perplexity, in two cases) and proxy providers (Oxylabs and AWMProxy, in Reddit v. SerpApi).
- Lawmakers have only just started targeting crawlers directly. We found 11 bills or bill pairs (14 bill numbers) in 8 legislatures that deal with scraping or crawlers in their text. Only 3 are mainly about crawlers, all from 2025–2026: New York’s Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act (S9934A, passed both houses on 5 June 2026), the federal Stealth Bot Prohibition Act (H.R. 9915) and New York’s AI Transparency for Journalism Act. Just 1 has become law: Indiana HEA 1360 (2026), which lets public agencies refuse records requests they suspect are data scraping.
The cases
Sorted by filing date. “Claims” are ProxyPicker’s tags for the claims a court opinion or order says were brought. A claim marked * comes only from the docket’s cause-of-action code, because no opinion was available. “Closed” means the docket shows a termination date; that alone doesn’t tell you how the case ended.
| Filed | Case | Court & docket | What was collected | Claims (ProxyPicker tags) | Key rulings | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-09-04 | Ryanair DAC v. Booking Holdings Inc. et al. Ryanair DAC v. Booking Holdings, Booking.com, KAYAK, Priceline, Agoda | D. Del. 1:20-cv-01191 docket · 2022-10-24 ruling · 2025-01-22 ruling | OTAs (directly or via vendors) allegedly screen-scraped Ryanair's site and circumvented its 'Shield' anti-scraping program | CFAA | Oct 2022: motion to dismiss granted in part, 4 CFAA counts survive. Jul 2024: jury found Booking.com liable on 2 CFAA counts and awarded $5,000. 22 Jan 2025: judgment as a matter of law granted for Booking.com. Appeal: 3d Cir. No. 25-1374 (terminated 2025-08-26 per CourtListener; disposition not in CL clusters) | Open (CourtListener) |
| 2020-10-14 | Meta Platforms, Inc. v. BrandTotal Ltd. et al. Meta Platforms v. BrandTotal Ltd., Unimania, Inc. | N.D. Cal. 3:20-cv-07182 docket · 2022-06-06 ruling · 2022-10-05 ruling | Ad-intelligence firm collected Facebook/Instagram ad data via browser-extension 'panelists' and direct access, including with fake or purchased accounts | Breach of contract / ToS; Unjust enrichment; CFAA; State computer-access law; Tortious interference; Unfair competition | 27 May 2022 summary judgment split: Meta won breach of contract and CDAFA/UCL liability for logged-in and fake-account collection; BrandTotal won on collection from non-password-protected pages (no CFAA/CDAFA violation even with technical barriers). Oct 2022: remaining counts dismissed after a stipulated permanent injunction. | Closed 2022-10-05 (CourtListener) |
| 2021-01-08 | In re Clearview AI, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation (MDL) Consumer class plaintiffs v. Clearview AI, Inc., Hoan Ton-That, Richard Schwartz, Thomas Mulcaire, Rocky Mountain Data Analytics LLC | N.D. Ill. 1:21-cv-00135 docket · 2022-02-14 ruling · 2022-08-10 ruling | Alleged covert scraping of over three billion facial photographs from the internet to build a face-recognition database | Privacy / biometrics (BIPA); Unjust enrichment | 14 Feb 2022: Clearview's motion to dismiss granted in part, denied in part. Aug 2022: leave to amend granted in part. Docket terminated 20 Mar 2025 (CourtListener); disposition reason not verified. Note: Privacy class action by people whose photos were scraped, not a site-owner suit. | Closed 2025-03-20 (CourtListener) |
| 2021-01-14 | Southwest Airlines Co. v. Kiwi.com, Inc. et al. Southwest Airlines v. Kiwi.com, Inc., Kiwi.com s.r.o. | N.D. Tex. 3:21-cv-00098 docket · 2021-09-30 ruling | Online travel agency allegedly scraped Southwest fares and sold Southwest flights in violation of the site's Terms | Breach of contract / ToS; Lanham Act / trademark; CFAA; State computer-access law; Unjust enrichment | 30 Sep 2021: preliminary injunction granted for Southwest ($10,000 bond). | Closed 2021-11-24 (CourtListener) |
| 2021-12-21 | MDSave Inc. v. Sesame, Inc. MDSave, Inc., MDSave Shared Services, Inc. v. Sesame, Inc. (and others) | W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-01338 docket · 2023-01-11 ruling | Healthcare marketplace allegedly used web-scraping tools to copy MDSave's listings data | CFAA; State computer-access law; Unfair competition; Tortious interference; Lanham Act / trademark; Other | 11 Jan 2023: the court's 'Web-Scraping Claims' were dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction; patent claims were dismissed for improper venue; the Lanham Act false-advertising claim survived. Docket terminated 9 Jun 2023 (CourtListener); disposition reason not verified. Note: 'Other' = civil conspiracy and patent claims. | Closed 2023-06-09 (CourtListener) |
| 2022-07-05 | Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Octopus Data Inc. Meta Platforms v. Octopus Data Inc. | N.D. Cal. 4:22-cv-03921 docket | Defendant makes the Octoparse scraping software (claims not verified from court records) | Not verified | No opinion on GovInfo. Docket terminated 31 May 2023; disposition not verified. | Closed 2023-05-31 (CourtListener) |
| 2022-11-18 | Chegg, Inc. v. Doe (Homeworkify) Chegg, Inc. v. John Doe / operators of Homeworkify (later Vikasa Swami) | N.D. Cal. 3:22-cv-07326 docket · 2023-07-03 ruling · 2023-11-07 ruling · 2026-03-20 ruling | Site allegedly used bots to scrape paywalled Chegg solutions and serve them for free | CFAA; State computer-access law; Breach of contract / ToS; Lanham Act / trademark | 3 Jul 2023: preliminary injunction denied. 7 Nov 2023: renewed preliminary injunction granted (bars access and scraping; domain transfer). 20 Mar 2026: order to show cause on dismissal for inactivity. Still open on CourtListener (last filing 6 Apr 2026). | Open (CourtListener) |
| 2023-01-06 | Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Bright Data Ltd. Meta Platforms v. Bright Data Ltd. (EMK Capital entities also named) | N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-00077 docket · 2024-01-23 ruling | Proxy and data vendor scraped and sold public Facebook and Instagram data | Breach of contract / ToS; Tortious interference | 23 Jan 2024: summary judgment for Bright Data on breach of contract. The court found Meta had not shown its terms barred logged-off scraping of public data; only tortious interference remained. Docket terminated 26 Feb 2024. Related: Bright Data Ltd. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., D. Del. 1:23-cv-00073 (declaratory action filed 20 Jan 2023, terminated 10 Feb 2023; not counted separately) | Closed 2024-02-26 (CourtListener) |
| 2023-01-12 | Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Voyager Labs Ltd. Meta Platforms v. Voyager Labs Ltd. | N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-00154 docket · 2024-05-23 ruling | Surveillance-software firm allegedly used tens of thousands of fake accounts to scrape Facebook and Instagram | Breach of contract / ToS; CFAA; State computer-access law | 23 May 2024: Voyager's motion to dismiss denied. Docket terminated 5 Dec 2024; disposition not verified. | Closed 2024-12-05 (CourtListener) |
| 2023-07-26 | X Corp. v. Bright Data Ltd. X Corp. v. Bright Data Ltd. | N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-03698 docket · 2024-05-09 ruling · 2024-11-26 ruling · 2025-04-18 ruling | Data-scraping company extracted public X data and sold scraping tools | Breach of contract / ToS; Trespass to chattels; Tortious interference; Unjust enrichment; Unfair competition; Other | 9 May 2024: complaint dismissed with leave to amend. 26 Nov 2024: amendment allowed for access-based claims but denied without leave for scraping-based claims. 18 Apr 2025: Bright Data's antitrust counterclaims largely sustained. Docket terminated 1 Jul 2025; disposition not verified. Note: 'Other' = misappropriation. | Closed 2025-07-01 (CourtListener) |
| 2023-07-31 | X Corp. v. Center for Countering Digital Hate, Inc. et al. X Corp. v. CCDH (US and UK), Stichting European Climate Foundation, Does | N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-03836 docket · 2024-03-25 ruling · 2024-03-25 ruling | Nonprofit researchers allegedly scraped X and used a third party's Brandwatch login to access X data for critical reports | Breach of contract / ToS; CFAA; Tortious interference | 25 Mar 2024: CCDH's anti-SLAPP motion granted, striking the contract and tort claims; CFAA claim dismissed; European Climate Foundation dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction. Appeal: 9th Cir. No. 24-2643 (open per CourtListener; last filing 2026-09-25) | Closed 2024-03-25 (CourtListener) |
| 2023-10-19 | Air Canada et al. v. Localhost LLC (Seats.aero) Air Canada, Aeroplan Inc. v. Localhost LLC (Seats.aero) | D. Del. 1:23-cv-01177 docket · 2024-03-14 ruling | Award-search site used automated bots to scrape Aeroplan availability via the site's API | Breach of contract / ToS | 14 Mar 2024: Air Canada's preliminary injunction motion denied; Localhost's partial motion to dismiss also denied. Note: Only the Terms-of-Use claim is verified from the opinion; other counts in the complaint were not verified. | Open (CourtListener) |
| 2024-04-23 | Cox Automotive Inc. v. Super Dispatch Inc. Cox Automotive, Inc. v. Super Dispatch Inc. | W.D. Mo. 4:24-cv-00292 docket · 2025-05-23 ruling · 2025-12-23 ruling | Competitor allegedly used a 'scraper' to collect listing data from password-protected areas of Central Dispatch | Trade secrets; Unjust enrichment; Unfair competition; Tortious interference; State computer-access law | 23 May 2025: partial motion to dismiss denied. 23 Dec 2025: consent permanent injunction entered on the parties' joint motion. Still open on CourtListener (last filing 31 Dec 2025). Note: Scraping is one of several theories. Claims also include false advertising (grouped under unfair competition) and Missouri computer tampering (grouped under state computer-access law). | Open (CourtListener) |
| 2025-02-10 | CDK Global, LLC v. Tekion Corp. et al. CDK Global, LLC v. Tekion Corp., InDesign Data, LLC | N.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-01394 docket · 2025-07-15 ruling | InDesign's DMSConnect allegedly designed to 'access, scrape, and collect data' from CDK's dealer management system without permission | CFAA; DMCA §1201 (anti-circumvention); State computer-access law; Trade secrets; Tortious interference; Unfair competition; Other | 15 Jul 2025: preliminary injunction denied; InDesign's motion to dismiss granted in part (SCA, tortious interference, UCL unfair prong, with leave to amend) and otherwise denied. Still open on CourtListener. Note: 'Other' = Stored Communications Act. | Open (CourtListener) |
| 2025-10-22 | Reddit, Inc. v. SerpApi LLC et al. Reddit, Inc. v. SerpApi LLC, Oxylabs UAB, AWMProxy, Perplexity AI, Inc. | S.D.N.Y. 1:25-cv-08736 docket | Party list includes a search-results scraping API, proxy providers and an AI answer engine (detailed allegations not verified from court records) | DMCA §1201 (anti-circumvention)* | No opinion on GovInfo. Open as of the CourtListener record. | Open (CourtListener) |
| 2025-11-04 | Amazon.com Services LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc. Amazon.com Services LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc. | N.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-09514 docket · 2026-03-09 ruling · 2026-08-04 ruling · 2026-05-18 ruling | Perplexity's Comet agentic AI browser accessed password-protected sections of Amazon.com on users' behalf | CFAA; State computer-access law | 9 Mar 2026: preliminary injunction granted. 4 Aug 2026: Ninth Circuit vacated it, holding that the user, not Perplexity, 'accessed' Amazon's computers. Jury trial set for 27 Sep 2027. District docket still open on CourtListener. Appeal: 9th Cir. No. 26-1444 (opinion 4 Aug 2026) Note: AI-agent access case rather than bulk scraping; included because it turns on automated access and data collection by an AI tool. | Active: remanded by 9th Cir. 2026-08-04; jury trial set for 2027-09-27 |
| 2025-12-19 | Google LLC v. SerpApi, LLC Google LLC v. SerpApi, LLC | N.D. Cal. 4:25-cv-10826 docket | Defendant sells a search-results scraping API (detailed allegations not verified from court records) | Copyright* | No opinion on GovInfo. Open as of the CourtListener record. | Open (CourtListener) |
Which laws site owners use
| Claim type (ProxyPicker tag) | Cases | Which cases |
|---|---|---|
| CFAA Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. §1030 | 9 | Ryanair v. Booking, Meta v. BrandTotal, Southwest v. Kiwi.com, MDSave v. Sesame, Chegg v. Doe, Meta v. Voyager Labs, X Corp. v. CCDH, CDK Global v. Tekion, Amazon v. Perplexity |
| Breach of contract / ToS website terms of service or user agreement | 8 | Meta v. BrandTotal, Southwest v. Kiwi.com, Chegg v. Doe, Meta v. Bright Data, Meta v. Voyager Labs, X Corp. v. Bright Data, X Corp. v. CCDH, Air Canada v. Localhost |
| State computer-access law e.g. California Penal Code §502 (CDAFA), Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act, Missouri computer tampering | 8 | Meta v. BrandTotal, Southwest v. Kiwi.com, MDSave v. Sesame, Chegg v. Doe, Meta v. Voyager Labs, Cox Automotive v. Super Dispatch, CDK Global v. Tekion, Amazon v. Perplexity |
| Tortious interference | 7 | Meta v. BrandTotal, MDSave v. Sesame, Meta v. Bright Data, X Corp. v. Bright Data, X Corp. v. CCDH, Cox Automotive v. Super Dispatch, CDK Global v. Tekion |
| Unjust enrichment | 5 | Meta v. BrandTotal, In re Clearview AI, Southwest v. Kiwi.com, X Corp. v. Bright Data, Cox Automotive v. Super Dispatch |
| Unfair competition | 5 | Meta v. BrandTotal, MDSave v. Sesame, X Corp. v. Bright Data, Cox Automotive v. Super Dispatch, CDK Global v. Tekion |
| Lanham Act / trademark | 3 | Southwest v. Kiwi.com, MDSave v. Sesame, Chegg v. Doe |
| Other misappropriation, Stored Communications Act, civil conspiracy, patent | 3 | MDSave v. Sesame, X Corp. v. Bright Data, CDK Global v. Tekion |
| Trade secrets | 2 | Cox Automotive v. Super Dispatch, CDK Global v. Tekion |
| DMCA §1201 (anti-circumvention) 17 U.S.C. §1201, bypassing technical protection measures | 2 | CDK Global v. Tekion, Reddit v. SerpApi* |
| Privacy / biometrics (BIPA) | 1 | In re Clearview AI |
| Trespass to chattels | 1 | X Corp. v. Bright Data |
| Copyright | 1 | Google v. SerpApi* |
Claims for Meta v. Octopus Data couldn’t be verified (no opinion or docket cause available to us), so it carries no tags. * = from the docket’s cause-of-action code only.
Landmark cases filed before 2020
These aren’t in the counts above, but the 2020–2025 cases keep citing them.
- hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. (N.D. Cal. 3:17-cv-03301; 9th Cir. 17-16783, filed 2017-06-07). hiQ sought declarations that its scraping of public profiles did not violate the CFAA, DMCA §1201 or trespass law, and sued for tortious interference and unfair competition. LinkedIn counterclaimed under the CFAA, Penal Code §502 and breach of contract. 18 Apr 2022: on remand after Van Buren, the 9th Circuit again affirmed the preliminary injunction for hiQ. Docket terminated 9 Dec 2022. docket · CA9 ruling · CAND ruling
- Facebook, Inc. v. Sluchevsky et al. (N.D. Cal. 4:19-cv-01277, filed 2019). Malicious browser extensions allegedly scraped user data. Claims: CFAA, CDAFA, breach of contract, fraud. 30 Sep 2020: default judgment and permanent injunction granted. CAND ruling · CAND ruling
Watchlist: dockets we verified but couldn’t classify
These dockets exist, but we couldn’t confirm from court records that they are about scraping, so they aren’t counted.
- Reddit, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC: Docket verified (N.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-05643, NOS 820, filed 3 Jul 2025, terminated 30 Mar 2026). No opinion available to us, so its claims and why the federal docket closed were not verified. docket
- LinkedIn Corp. v. ProAPIs Inc. et al.: Docket verified (N.D. Cal. 5:25-cv-08393, cause 15:1125 Lanham Act, filed 2 Oct 2025, terminated 16 Sep 2026). The only court records on GovInfo are procedural, so the scraping allegations were not verified. docket
Reviewed and excluded
- CoStar Group v. Commercial Real Estate Exchange (C.D. Cal. 2:20-cv-08819; 9th Cir. 23-55662): Verified record is copyright and antitrust; the 9th Cir. opinion does not mention scraping.
- SerpApi, LLC v. Kucinskas: Trade-secret/employment dispute, not a scraping claim on the record.
- Bright Data patent suits: Patent cases, not about the legality of data collection.
Scraping and AI-crawler legislation
We list a bill if its text deals with scraping or crawlers. Tier A bills are mainly about crawlers or scraping. Tier B bills are about something else but contain a specific scraping or crawler provision. Companion bills (the same bill introduced in both chambers) share a row. Status and last action come from LegiScan; for New York we also checked Open States, and the two sources agreed.
By status: Introduced / in committee: 8; Passed both chambers: 1; Enacted: 1; Failed / dead: 1.
| Jurisdiction | Bill | Tier | What the scraping / crawler provision does | Status | Last action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. Congress | H.R. 9915 Stealth Bot Prohibition Act LegiScan | A | Stealth Bot Prohibition Act: defines 'bot' (anything that retrieves, scans, indexes or scrapes a site, including AI agents) and 'stealth bot' (one that accesses a site without prior disclosure) | Introduced / in committee | 2026-07-23: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. |
| U.S. Congress | S. 2381 PROACTIV Artificial Intelligence Data Act of 2025 Preventing Recurring Online Abuse of Children Through Intentional Vetting of Artificial In LegiScan | B | PROACTIV AI Data Act: NIST framework for CSAM in AI training datasets, covering datasets 'created using automated data crawlers or data scraping tools' | Introduced / in committee | 2025-07-22: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. |
| U.S. Congress | S. 4098 Artificial Intelligence-Ready Data Act LegiScan | B | AI-Ready Data Act: open government data assets should be available for download, including 'by web-scraping' (facilitates scraping) | Introduced / in committee | 2026-03-16: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. |
| Illinois | HB 4624 BODY CAMERA FOOTAGE-DISCLOSURE LegiScan | B | Body-camera FOIA bill: requesters must certify they will not use footage for, among other things, 'scraping of the footage using a scraping program' or AI training | Introduced / in committee | 2026-02-03: Referred to Rules Committee |
| Indiana | HB 1360 Access to public records. LegiScan | B | Public-records law: defines 'data scraping'; agencies may decline electronic requests suspected of being data scraping or phishing, and may use CAPTCHA on request portals | Enacted | 2026-03-04: Public Law 97 |
| New Hampshire | HB 1316 Restricting the collection and disclosure of autism-related data by state agencies. LegiScan | B | Bars state agencies from collecting, or using data-scraping technology to gather, autism-related data unless the collection complies with HIPAA and other law | Introduced / in committee | 2026-02-25: Minority Committee Report: Ought to Pass |
| New York | S 9934 (with A 11292) Prohibits the deployment of a stealth crawler in a manner that would damage, impair or burden the operation of a covered news source or othe LegiScan | A | NY Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act: bars deploying an undisclosed 'stealth crawler' that damages, impairs or burdens a covered news source or causes it economic harm | Passed both chambers (not yet delivered to governor as of last action) | 2026-06-05: returned to senate |
| New York | S 8331 (with A 8595) Enacts the "New York artificial intelligence transparency for journalism act"; requires developers of generative artificial intelligence sys LegiScan | A | NY AI Transparency for Journalism Act: generative-AI developers must disclose the URLs their crawlers accessed and the identity of the crawlers they deploy | Introduced / in committee | 2026-01-07: REFERRED TO INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY |
| Pennsylvania | HB 1533 In culpability, providing for liability for deployment of artificial intelligence system. LegiScan | B | AI liability bill: lists 'unlawful data scraping' committed through automated or autonomous systems among the harms that can create liability | Introduced / in committee | 2025-05-30: Referred to Judiciary |
| Vermont | H 812 An act relating to data loyalty LegiScan | B | Data-loyalty bill: defines 'scraping'; covered entities must use reasonable safeguards to stop unauthorized third parties scraping covered data | Introduced / in committee | 2026-01-29: Read first time and referred to the Committee on Commerce and Economic Development |
| Wisconsin | AB 1186 (with SB 1171) Prohibiting retail dynamic price gouging of consumer goods and providing a penalty. LegiScan | B | Dynamic price-gouging bill: lists data 'obtained … by using automated systems such as Internet scraping or crawling' among the surveillance data it restricts | Failed / dead | 2026-03-23: Failed to pass pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 1 |
Not listed: bills that only mention “scraping” in an unrelated sense (scrap metal, road scraping, medical scrapings) and bills that mention web crawling only in passing. One example of the latter is the federal SEARCH Act of 2026 (S. 5007), which defines a search index as data “collected by web crawling” but doesn’t regulate crawlers. State privacy laws that exempt or define “publicly available” data are a separate topic and aren’t covered here.
What the record shows (and doesn’t)
- Public versus logged-in data is the line courts keep drawing. In Meta v. BrandTotal the court held that collecting non-password-protected pages didn’t violate the CFAA or California’s §502, even with technical barriers in place. It still found BrandTotal liable for collection through logged-in products and fake or purchased accounts. Meta v. Bright Data and X Corp. v. Bright Data both went against the platforms over public, logged-out data.
- Terms of service cut both ways. Contract claims succeeded where the court found the scraper bound by the site’s terms (BrandTotal at summary judgment, Southwest v. Kiwi.com at the preliminary-injunction stage). They failed where the court found the terms didn’t cover logged-off scraping (Meta v. Bright Data), or where the court saw the claims as really being about control of public data (X Corp. v. Bright Data).
- AI agents are a new question. In Amazon v. Perplexity the Ninth Circuit held that, on the facts before it, the user rather than Perplexity “accessed” Amazon when Perplexity’s Comet assistant shopped on the user’s behalf. That ruling was about a preliminary injunction and the case goes to trial in 2027.
- None of this predicts how a court would treat your project. Facts, contracts and jurisdictions differ, and many of these cases settled or closed for reasons the public record doesn’t show. Our guides to proxies for web scraping and scraping APIs cover the technical side, not the legal one.
Methodology
- Finding cases. We searched CourtListener (Free Law Project) federal dockets and opinions for scraping-related terms and for parties known to be in scraping disputes. We then searched GovInfo’s United States Courts Opinions collection, which turned up more cases. Every case is tied to a docket number and to a CourtListener docket record or a GovInfo court-opinion package.
- What counts. A case is in the headline set if it was filed in a federal court from 2020 to 2025 and is clearly about scraping or automated data collection. For 14 of the 17, a court opinion or order describes the scraping or automated collection. For the other 3, we have only the docket, and the defendant is a scraping-software or scraping-API company (Octopus Data, SerpApi). Related filings, such as Bright Data’s Delaware suit against Meta, are noted but not counted separately.
- Claim tags. We read the opinions and orders listed in the table and tagged the claims they say were brought. These tags are ProxyPicker’s classification. A claim that appears only in the docket’s cause-of-action code is marked *. We didn’t read the complaints themselves, so a case may include claims we didn’t tag.
- Dates and status. Filing and termination dates come from CourtListener dockets. Where we have no CourtListener record, the filing date comes from the opinion; where the opinion doesn’t give one, we use the year in the docket number and label it “year only”. Status comes from CourtListener or from the latest court record we could read.
- Bills. We ran 20 full-text searches in LegiScan (all 50 states, DC and Congress, all years), for terms such as “web scraping”, “data scraping”, “crawler”, “stealth crawler” and “scraping” with “artificial intelligence”. We kept bills with action since 2020, then cross-checked with Open States. Out of more than 1,200 search hits, nearly all were about something else (scrap metal, crawler cranes, medical “scrapings”). We read the text of each remaining candidate and kept only bills with a real scraping or crawler provision.
Limitations
- Federal courts only. State-court cases (for example breach-of-contract suits filed in state court) and cases outside the US aren’t covered. Arbitrations and cease-and-desist letters never show up in court records.
- Not every case. Cases that never produced a published opinion and don’t use the word “scraping” on their docket are easy to miss. On 2 Oct 2026 we filled the six previously missing CourtListener dockets (Clearview, MDSave, Chegg, Cox, CDK, Amazon v Perplexity); every case in the table now has a CourtListener link.
- Outcomes move. Several cases are on appeal or still open. “Closed” dates don’t say whether a case settled, was dismissed or went to judgment, unless we cite a ruling that does.
- Bills change fast. Statuses are as of the last action shown. Many introduced bills never get a hearing.
Download the data
- Cases (CSV): one row per case, with docket links, claim tags and their source, rulings, status and links to the source documents.
- Bills (CSV): one row per bill or bill pair, with tier, status, last action and official links.
Free to use with attribution (CC BY 4.0). Court records come from CourtListener (Free Law Project) and GovInfo (U.S. Government Publishing Office); bill data from LegiScan and Open States. Please cite the date you accessed the data.
Cite or embed
Suggested citation: ProxyPicker (2026). “Scraping Law Hub: US web-scraping court cases (2020–2025) and scraping & AI-crawler legislation.” Data checked 2 October 2026. https://proxypicker.com/scraping-law-hub/
Embed the timeline:
<a href="https://proxypicker.com/scraping-law-hub/"><img src="https://proxypicker.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/proxypicker-scraping-law-hub-2026-10-timeline-clfill.png" alt="Timeline of 17 federal web-scraping cases, 2020-2025 (ProxyPicker Scraping Law Hub)" width="800" /></a><br />Source: <a href="https://proxypicker.com/scraping-law-hub/">ProxyPicker Scraping Law Hub</a> (2 October 2026)Related: AI-Crawler & llms.txt Census (who blocks AI bots in robots.txt) · Anti-Bot Census (how many sites screen for bots) · Best proxies for web scraping · Best scraping APIs · The Price of a Gigabyte.