Munich Court Rules Suno Infringed GEMA Copyrights

A Munich Regional Court ruled that AI music startup Suno infringed copyright by using songs from GEMA’s catalog to train its models and by reproducing protected works without a license. The court ordered that licenses are required both for training models on works in GEMA’s repertoire and for the commercial exploitation of music generated by those models when it relies on that repertoire.

The lawsuit was brought by GEMA and focused on six tracks, including “Daddy Cool,” “Rasputin,” “Forever Young” and “Mambo No. 5.” GEMA argued Suno trained its systems on protected recordings without permission and asked the court to require licensing for past and future use of works in its catalog.

Suno disputed the ruling and said it is evaluating an appeal. In a company statement, Suno stated, “Our tools give people the ability to create new songs, and from the beginning we trained our models to create new songs, not reproduce existing ones.” The company added that protections were built into its platform and described the ruling as based on a misunderstanding of how its technology works.

Leaked source code and related material previously showed the company’s training data allegedly included more than 113,000 hours from YouTube Music, about 62,000 hours from Pond5 and roughly 12,000 hours from Deezer. Those disclosures had prompted industry concerns that copyrighted recordings were used without permission.

About eight months earlier, GEMA prevailed in a separate Munich case in which a court found that an AI product had unlawfully reproduced copyrighted song lyrics. That decision and the Suno ruling reflect ongoing legal scrutiny in Germany of how generative AI systems use copyrighted music and text in training and output.

The court’s order covers both the act of using copyrighted recordings to train AI models and the commercial release or exploitation of music produced by those models when it depends on works in GEMA’s catalog.