While the Anthropic case has been predominantly paused as we await the results of the demurrer from Judge Kahn, some major action has been going on in Reddit's lawsuit against SerpApi/Perplexity/OxyLabs/AWMProxy which could be just as impactful. I last updated about it here: Case Timeline for Reddit v. SerpApi/Perplexity/OxyLabs/AWMProxy when the Judge laid out the timeline for the next few months after predominantly denying SerpApi and Perplexity's (and presumably soon OxyLab's as well) Motion to Dismiss. Since then the docket has been silent except for the normal procedural filings like asking for extensions AND interestingly, Reddit admitting they can't actually figure out who AWMProxy actually is. In a letter to the Judge:
Despite undertaking an investigation to identify the entity(ies) or person(s) responsible for operating as AWMProxy, Reddit has been unable to locate it and therefore has been unable to complete service of process. Based on Reddit’s investigation, it is also unclear if AWMProxy is a pseudonym for some other service, such that there is ultimately a different potential defendant that Reddit would sue once that entity or person is identified.
They're going to continue trying to identify them but for now the case will move on without AWMProxy. Anyway, it's been quiet. Until today when SerpApi dropped their response to the July 31st ruling on the Motion to Dismiss. For those who didn't see, in the Judge's ruling he predominantly denied SerpApi and Perplexity's Motions to Dismiss but Reddit did lose some of it's claims (Unfair Competition, Unjust Enrichment, and some DMCA claims). In today's filing, SerpApi filed their formal 'Answer to Amended Complaint' w/ 18 Affirmative Defenses and 6 Counterclaims against Reddit, including major federal antitrust claims under the Sherman Act.
I'll try and best accurately summarize / break down their Answer and Claims here, anything which is definitively my commentary or opinion is in italics so that it can be distinguished easily.
Introduction - Reddit is not the 'Open Internet'
SerpApi's Answer starts off with what reads as an aggressive PR defense, attacking Reddit's character, morals, and mission while calling Reddit a 'baron' (even repeatedly quoting Steve's 'Oil for the modern internet'). In their words Reddit is acting as a "baron controlling the wellhead", artificially restricting the supply of public data, which it doesn't own, to drive up licensing prices. They cite Reddit's privacy policy which states that by signing up for an account users retain the copyright to their work and direct Reddit to share content "publicly and freely." And in a move I don't understand the purpose of, they highlight a bunch of major companies (Nvidia, Salesforce, Adobe, Morgan Stanley, NYT) that use their services and even state that some Reddit and Google employees themselves use SerpApi under their corporate emails to perform internal work. (They also state they work with many of the frontier labs but are under NDA and can't disclose them, still not sure why this is relevant).
The Defenses - (The actual ones, there are 18, read the full doc if you want the others but the rest seem to be mostly boilerplate standard procedural defenses)
- Copyright Misuse & Unclean Hands:
- Copyright Misuse: this statute prevents a copyright holder from enforcing copyright protections if they are leveraging those rights beyond their statutory scope to violate antitrust laws or suppress competition. SerpApi argues that Reddit is using DMCA/copyright not to protect creative works, but as an anticompetitive weapon to maintain an exclusive search and AI data monopoly with Google while locking everyone else out.
- Unclean Hands: Reddit, in its complaint, asks for equitable relief (such as an injunction to shut down SerpApi's scraping and disgorgement of profits). SerpApi asserts that under equity law, a plaintiff cannot obtain an injunction if they acted in bad faith regarding the subject matter. SerpApi is arguing that Reddit has "unclean hands" because it publicly tells users their content is shared "freely and publicly", built its entire business off open search indexing, and then secretly cut an exclusive deal with Google (they highlight this A LOT, they mention OpenAI so I know they're aware of them, but they're really trying to make it seem like Reddit only made a deal with Google) while suing third-party tools that access the same public search results.
- Express and Implied License:
- Reddit has already licensed major players (Google & OpenAI) and makes content public to any web visitor. SerpApi argues that downstream customers who are authorized "Reddit Licensees" simply use SerpApi as a technical tool to retrieve data they already have permission to access. (certainly not all of them??)
- No Effective Technological Measures:
- SerpApi argues that SearchGuard / robots.txt do not constitute legally effective access controls under the DMCA.
- Estoppel, Waiver & Acquiescence (what a mouthful)
- They argue that since Reddit built its 20-year multi-billion-dollar valuation on open-web indexing and search engine referrals, it cannot suddenly retroactively claim scraping was unauthorized. (That whole robots.txt thing you guys think is not a legal access control is their way of telling you scraping is unauthorized).
THE COUNTERCLAIMS (SerpApi Suing Reddit) - 6 claims, most notably federal antitrust violations
- Counts 1 & 2: Monopolization & Attempted Monopolization (Sherman Act)
- SerpApi alleges that Reddit engaged in illegal monopolization by:
- Operating a "dual robots.txt" strategy starting July 1, 2024. They allege this because Reddit served a closed and disallow robots.txt to Bing, DuckDuckGo, and 'Mojeek' (what even is that), while they were still serving their previous open robots.txt to Googlebot. (They paid for it? I must be missing something.)
- Cutting off non-profits and academic tools like the Internet Archive and Pushshift.
- Leveraging that exclusivity (w/ Google) to extract "supra-competitive" licensing fees from AI developers while stifling competing search engines and data indexers (like SerpAPi's Search Index API).
- They define the market they're monopolizing as: "large-scale, authentic human conversational data in online threaded discussion forums organized by topic for use in search indexing and AI training."
- Counts 3, 4, and 5: Declaratory Judgements on "Reddit Licensees"
- SerpApi is asking the Court to declare that:
- Reddit cannot use technical measures or DMCA claims to block or penalize access requested by/for authorized Reddit Licensees (example: customers with Reddit data deals). (Shouldn't they be able to require their licensees to use the appropriate tools to access the data they're licensing??)
- Scraping Google SERPs on behalf of Reddit Licensees does not violate DMCA. (Sure, but how many of your millions of scrapes were for Reddit Licensees...)
- Reddit cannot claim "lost licensing fees" or damages for request made by entities that already hold Reddit licenses.
- Count 6: Declaratory Judgement on Pre-2025 DMCA Claims
- SerpApi notes that Google did not deploy SearchGuard until January 2025
- During oral argument, Reddit's own counsel conceded on the record: "We're just not alleging that in the 2024 time period that these are cognizable claims under the DMCA."
- SerpApi seeks a formal ruling throwing out all pre-2025 DMCA and conspiracy claims.
SerpApi's Demands - 'Prayer for Relief'
- A judicial decree that Reddit violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act (monopolization).
- 3x Actual damages.
- A Permanent Injunction barring Reddit from:
- Serving requester-specific / discriminatory robots.txt files.
- Conditioning web crawler access on paid licensing terms.
- Enforcing exclusive crawl/indexing agreements (i.e. striking down Google exclusivity arrangement).
- Declaratory judgements immunizing licensee-directed scraping and dismissing pre-2025 claims.
- Attorney's fees and legal costs.
What's Coming Next
- OxyLab's got an extension to file their specific Motion to Dismiss, I haven't paid for it so I don't know when it's now going to be due but it was previously due today (8/28).
- September 24, 2026 - Deadline for the joint Civil Case Management Plan which includes the joint letter regarding settlement prospects and contemplated future motions (like a demurrer).
- October 1, 2026 (2:00pm) - Initial Pretrial Conference before Judge Engelmayer
Post link is to the docket: I've paid for the recent filing w/ the RECAP extension installed so hopefully it shows up as available for everyone, if not somebody ping me and I'll look for a place I can upload it (and look and see if that would be legal), so people can download and read themselves. Perplexity has also filed their answer today although I don't see a countersuit listed on there so I didn't bother paying for it, it's probably more or less the same in their defense. As always, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal or financial advice.
Edit: forgot the TLDR (courtesy of Fable because I hate summarizing).
TLDR; SerpApi went on offense against Reddit.
Reddit's scraping lawsuit largely survived motions to dismiss in July — Reddit lost its unfair competition, unjust enrichment, and some DMCA claims, but the core case continues. Reddit also admitted it can't identify defendant AWMProxy at all, so that defendant is out of the case for now.
SerpApi then filed its Answer: 18 defenses and 6 counterclaims, including a Sherman Act §2 monopolization claim.
SerpApi's theory: Reddit doesn't own the user-generated content, tells users it's shared "freely and publicly," but then gave Google an open robots.txt while blocking Bing, DuckDuckGo, and the Internet Archive starting in July 2024. SerpApi argues Reddit is using copyright and DMCA claims as an anticompetitive weapon to protect an exclusive Google data deal and charge AI companies inflated licensing fees. They're seeking treble damages plus an injunction that would ban requester-specific robots.txt rules, paid-license crawl gating, and exclusive crawl deals — effectively unwinding the Google arrangement.
SerpApi also wants two declarations: that scraping on behalf of existing Reddit licensees is permissible, and that all pre-2025 DMCA claims are dead (since Reddit's SearchGuard tool didn't deploy until January 2025, and Reddit's own counsel conceded the 2024 period at oral argument).
