A legal battle between the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered discovery platform Perplexity and Amazon spilled over to a U.S. appeals court following a judge’s order on March 9.
U.S. District Judge Maxin Chesney ordered that Perplexity should not be allowed to access password-protected information on Amazon’s site. That order came in response to Amazon’s request for a preliminary injunction, halting activity taking place through Perplexity Comet web browser.
However, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted that order on March 16. It gave Perplexity a temporary window to continue operating as it had been previously. Meanwhile, Perplexity continues to appeal the district court’s decision from March 9.
Why Perplexity will temporarily have to access Amazon.com
“The request for an administrative stay is granted,” the March 16 filing at the Court of Appeals reads. “The district court’s March 9, 2026 order is temporarily stayed pending resolution of the motion for a stay pending appeal.”
The latest decision pre-empted the March 9 order from going into effect on March 17, potentially stopping Perplexity’s Comet browser from using Amazon’s website, even when Comet users are logged in with their Amazon credentials.
“In the instant case, Amazon has provided strong evidence that Perplexity, through its Comet browser, accesses with the Amazon user’s permission but without authorization by Amazon, the user’s password-protected account … thereby obtaining information as to the user’s private Amazon account information, and that such information is transmitted to Perplexity’s servers for the purpose of conducting said user’s requested tasks,” Chesney wrote on March 9.
Her order came as she concluded that Amazon’s case was likely to succeed.
“Next, the Court finds Amazon is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction, in that Perplexity has made clear that, in the absence of the relief requested, it will continue to engage in the above-referenced challenged conduct,” she continued.
What’s next for Perplexity?
Following the appeals court’s March 16 decision, Perplexity will seek a longer stay as Amazon’s case continues. The resulting case for the appeal is listed as “Amazon.com Services v. Perplexity AI, 26-1444, US Court of Appeals (9th Circuit).”
In the larger case, Amazon is challenging Perplexity’s ability to use data within its Comet browsing experience that Amazon considers proprietary. That argument is illustrative of Amazon’s approach to agentic commerce, where it has generally preferred directing shoppers to use Amazon AI tools instead of third-party AI platforms. Other retailers, such as Amazon’s leading competitor Walmart, by contrast, have opted to work directly with third-party platforms, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Amazon ranks No. 1 in Digital Commerce 360’s Top 2000 Database. The database is how Digital Commerce 360 tracks the largest North American online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.
Amazon is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database. That database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV).
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