New Delhi, Aug. 5 -- SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that Perplexity's Comet AI shopping agent can continue accessing Amazon's platform without the e-commerce giant's permission, dealing a blow to Amazon's campaign to wall off its marketplace from AI competitors and opening a significant legal corridor for the fast-growing field of agentic commerce.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an injunction that Amazon had obtained under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 anti-hacking statute that Amazon argued Perplexity violated by having its agent scrape product data and complete purchases on its site. The three-judge panel rejected that framing, ruling that it was users, not Perplexity, who accessed Ama...