AUSTIN, Texas, April 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday, March 13, 2026, SerpApi filed a motion to dismiss Reddit's amended complaint that was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, arguing that "Reddit's second attempt to plead viable claims against SerpApi fares no better than its first."
In October 2025, Reddit served SerpApi, Perplexity, and two other companies with a lawsuit, making claims of copyright protections over information that its users post. Then in February Reddit amended its complaint.
"Reddit is a platform built on the contributions of millions of people who posted publicly, freely, and in good faith," SerpApi founder and CEO Julien Khaleghy wrote in a blog post published after the filing. "Now Reddit wants to monetize that content without users' knowledge or consent and is attempting to use litigation to shut down anyone who accesses it without paying Reddit a toll. But Reddit doesn't own it. The people who wrote it own it."
Reddit's amended complaint invokes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to become the gatekeeper for content that belongs to tens of millions of people who chose to post publicly. In its motion to dismiss Reddit's amended complaint, SerpApi asserts that Reddit holds only a non-exclusive license to user content, which means Reddit lacks standing to bring DMCA claims over that content. The motion states, "Reddit's User Agreement expressly states that Reddit users 'retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content,' while reserving for Reddit only a 'non-exclusive . . . license' to such user-generated content." The motion continues, "Because Reddit does not have any copyright interest in its users' content (to the extent such content is even copyrightable), Reddit falls outside the DMCA's zone of interests and lacks statutory standing to assert its DMCA claims."
Khaleghy added in a blog post following the filing, "No court has ever let a party like Reddit bring a DMCA claim: one that doesn't own the copyrights, doesn't hold an exclusive license, and doesn't control the technology allegedly circumvented. Reddit is asking this court to be the first."
According to the SerpApi motion, Reddit's amended complaint does not allege that SerpApi ever accessed Reddit.com directly. Rather, SerpApi accessed Google's publicly available search result pages, which display brief snippets of Reddit content alongside countless other sources. SerpApi argues in the motion that the DMCA "was enacted to 'protect the [copyright] owner' from internet piracy by barring circumvention of measures 'used by copyright owners to protect their works,'" not to allow a platform to assert rights over public search results it does not control. Reddit's own Privacy Policy tells users their public content will appear in search results, SerpApi notes, making any claim of alleged harm from that public visibility self-defeating.
The motion's Preliminary Statement concludes, "Because Reddit has already had an opportunity to amend and still cannot plead viable claims against SerpApi, dismissal with prejudice is warranted."
"SerpApi has operated transparently and lawfully since 2017," Khaleghy stated in the blog post accompanying the filing. "We believe in the free exchange of ideas and information, as protected by the First Amendment, and we provide structured access to information that is already public. We help developers, researchers, and businesses build on the open web. We will continue to do that, and we will fight every attempt to stop us."
SerpApi's motion to dismiss is available here: https://serpapi.com/blog/reddits-lawsuit-is-a-dangerous-attempt-to-expand-platform-power/
Media contact: press@serpapi.com
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SOURCE SerpApi, LLC
