Ninth Circuit refuses Amazon's request to rehear Perplexity injunction case

In a recent decision, the Ninth Circuit denied Amazon's petition to rehear, as a full panel, the district court order that prohibited Perplexity's Comet AI Assistant from navigating password-protected zones of the Amazon marketplace. The appellate panel reported that not a single judge requested a vote on whether to rehear the case. The original ruling, issued in August, concluded that Amazon was unlikely to succeed in showing that Perplexity's actions breached the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.

Consequently, the injunction against Perplexity remains in force. The court's refusal to rehear underscores the difficulty of overturning the lower-court order. The dispute highlights ongoing legal battles over AI tools accessing commercial platforms.