# Legal & TOS Landscape

## Legal & TOS Landscape

### Google Maps TOS

**"Customer will not export, extract, or otherwise scrape Google Maps Content for use outside the Services."**

This is a contractual prohibition, not criminal statute. Breach of contract, not a crime.

### Google v. SerpAPI (Dec 2025 — Ruling Pending)

**Filed:** December 19, 2025, N.D. California (Case No. 4:25-cv-10826)

#### Google's DMCA Claims

1. **Access circumvention** (17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A)): SerpAPI circumvented SearchGuard "on billions of separate occasions." $200-$2,500 per violation.
2. **Trafficking in circumvention tools** (17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2)): Marketing services to bypass SearchGuard.

SerpAPI's requests increased "25,000%" over two years — hundreds of millions daily.

#### SerpAPI's Defense (Motion to Dismiss, Feb 2026)

- Google doesn't own copyright to third-party search content
- SearchGuard protects business model, not copyrighted works
- "Google's entire business began with a web crawler that copied the content"

Hearing: May 19, 2026 before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — **ruling not yet published**.

**Industry impact:** If Google prevails, rank tracking, competitive intelligence, and SEO analytics could become legally untenable.

### Key Legal Precedents

<table id="bkmrk-caseyearimpact-van-b"><tr><th>Case</th><th>Year</th><th>Impact</th></tr><tr><td>Van Buren v. US</td><td>2021</td><td>CFAA limited to insiders. ToS violations are not computer crime</td></tr><tr><td>hiQ v. LinkedIn</td><td>2022</td><td>Public data scraping doesn't violate CFAA (Ninth Circuit, reaffirmed)</td></tr><tr><td>X Corp v. Bright Data</td><td>2023</td><td>Platforms can't claim copyright on user-generated content</td></tr><tr><td>Meta v. Bright Data</td><td>2024</td><td>Logged-out users haven't accepted ToS — no contract breach</td></tr></table>

**Key shift:** Google abandoned CFAA arguments (neutered for public data) for **DMCA anti-circumvention claims** — targeting SearchGuard bypass specifically.

### US vs. EU

#### United States

- Public data scraping generally legal (CFAA precedent)
- ToS violations = contract, not criminal
- CAN-SPAM for outreach from scraped data

#### European Union

- GDPR: public availability does NOT equal lawful basis (Article 6)
- Names, phones, reviewer profiles = personal data
- Need legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) for B2B
- Must provide opt-out, honor right to be forgotten
- Penalties: up to 20M EUR or 4% global turnover
- EU AI Act enforcement: August 2026

### Risk by Method

<table id="bkmrk-methodlegal-risktos-"><tr><th>Method</th><th>Legal Risk</th><th>TOS Violation</th><th>DMCA Exposure</th></tr><tr><td>Official Places API</td><td>None</td><td>No</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Data marketplace purchase</td><td>Low</td><td>No (you didn't scrape)</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Commercial platforms</td><td>Medium</td><td>Yes</td><td>Indirect</td></tr><tr><td>Open-source scrapers</td><td>Medium</td><td>Yes</td><td>Low</td></tr><tr><td>SERP API proxies</td><td>High</td><td>Yes</td><td>Active lawsuit</td></tr><tr><td>Reverse-engineered APIs</td><td>Highest</td><td>Yes</td><td>Circumvention</td></tr></table>

### Enforcement Reality

Survey of 40-50 agencies scraping Maps at scale: **zero cease-and-desist letters**. Google relies on technical countermeasures for most scrapers, reserving legal action for large commercial operations (SerpAPI).

### Sources

- [IPWatchdog — Google Sues SerpAPI](https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/12/26/google-sues-serpapi-parasitic-scraping-circumvention-protection-measures/)
- [SerpAPI Motion to Dismiss](https://searchengineland.com/serpapi-motion-dismiss-google-scraping-lawsuit-469889)
- [Is Scraping Google Maps Legal?](https://scrap.io/scrape-google-gaps-legal)