A Munich court finds training on music infringing
The Munich Regional Court I largely upheld GEMA's claims against Suno over six songs: copying in training in the United States, memorisation in the models and reproduction in the outputs were held to infringe.
Why it matters
A German court applied US law to training in the United States and refused fair use because the works are recognisable in the outputs, and it held memorisation in a model to be reproduction.
The 42nd civil chamber gave judgment on 31 July 2026 in case 42 O 763/25. The songs include "Atemlos durch die Nacht", "Rasputin", "Forever Young" and "Daddy Cool". By the court, Suno took the recordings from YouTube by stream ripping, circumventing a technical protection. It founded jurisdiction over the US training on § 131 of the collecting societies act (VGG). Models v3.5 and v4 were stored on servers in Germany and reproduce the songs; the text and data mining exception does not cover that. Offering the model was itself held to be communication to the public. Information and damages were awarded for three of the songs and the refrain of "Mambo No. 5", for acts since 1 July 2023; the one claim rejected concerned the right of making works available to the public. The court judged the training in the United States under US law and rejected the fair use defence: unlike in Bartz and Kadrey, the works came back recognisably in the model's outputs to prompts giving only the lyrics. The same chamber decided GEMA v OpenAI on 11 November 2025. The judgment is not final: an appeal is before the Munich Higher Regional Court (case 6 U 2314/26). The full judgment, 559 paragraphs, is published in the Bavarian database of decisions; it gives no judges' names.