On 31 July 2026, the 42nd Civil Chamber of the Landgericht München I (Munich Regional Court I), which specialises in copyright, gave judgment in GEMA v Suno (case 42 O 763/25). GEMA, a collecting society, sued Suno, the provider of an AI-based music generator. The court largely granted GEMA's claims for an injunction, information and damages. The judgment is not final.
The claims concern six works: "Atemlos durch die Nacht", "Rasputin", "Big in Japan", "Forever Young", the refrain of "Mambo No. 5" and "Daddy Cool"; the lyrics were not in issue. The court held that Suno's models, stored on servers in Germany, had memorised the works, which infringes the reproduction right under section 16 of the German Copyright Act (UrhG), and that the text and data mining exception in section 44b UrhG does not cover those copies. Offering the model and using it to generate music infringed the unnamed right of communication to the public under section 15(2) UrhG, and the outputs reproduced and communicated the works to the public in Germany. For the copies made during training in the United States, the court applied US law as the law of the country for which protection is sought and held that they were not fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107: every factor weighed against Suno, and, unlike in Bartz and Kadrey, the two US cases that had found AI training to be fair use, Suno's outputs were substantially similar to the original works.
The judgment assesses each stage of an AI music service separately: training, under the law of the country for which protection is sought (here the United States); the model stored in Germany; offering the model to users; and the outputs. Section 131(1) and (2) of the Collecting Societies Act (VGG), which gives a collecting society a special forum for connected claims, allowed GEMA to bring its claims about the training in the United States before the Munich court together with those about Germany.
Licentium advises AI developers and digital content distributors on copyright exposure across European jurisdictions. Work we undertake includes copyright clearance strategy for AI training datasets, collecting society licence negotiations, cross-border copyright risk assessments, and support in AI copyright disputes before EU courts.
Source: Landgericht München I, press release 16 of 31 July 2026, Urteil GEMA gegen SUNO (42 O 763/25)