Reddit, Inc. v. SerpApi, LLC, et al. (Reddit, Inc. v. Perplexity AI, Inc.)
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- Docket
- 1:25-cv-08736
- Parties
- Plaintiff: Reddit, Inc. Defendants: Perplexity AI, Inc.; SerpApi, LLC (Texas); Oxylabs UAB (Lithuania); AWMProxy (described by Reddit as a former botnet).
- Claim type
- ip-scraping
- Filed
- 2025-10-22
Summary
On October 22, 2025, Reddit, Inc. sued Perplexity AI and three web-scraping intermediaries (SerpApi, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy) in the Southern District of New York, alleging an industrial-scale data-laundering scheme to harvest Reddit user content. Reddit claims the defendants circumvented its anti-scraping controls using proxy networks, fake user agents, and IP rotation, accessing Reddit data through Google search results rather than Reddit's own servers. The complaint asserts claims including DMCA anti-circumvention violations, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment, and seeks damages plus an injunction. As evidence, Reddit cited a hidden honeypot post reachable only via Google's crawler that allegedly surfaced in Perplexity's outputs. The defendants have denied wrongdoing, and the case remains in active litigation.