German court rules against Suno in landmark AI music copyright case

[Nicola]

A Munich court has handed down what's being called one of Europes first binding rulings on AI generated music, finding that AI music platform Suno infringed copyright by training its models on songs represented by GEMA, Germanys music collecting society, without ever securing a license

The Munich Regional Courts 42nd civil chamber ruled on July 31st that Suno had no right to process the work of GEMA represented artists after evidence showed its system had memorized and reproduced their songs, the case centered on six well known compositions including Boney Ms Rasputin, Alphavilles Forever Young and Lou Begas Mambo No 5, the court prohibited four distinct infringing acts, reproduction for training purposes carried out in the US, reproduction through memorization inside the model itself in Germany, making the model available to the public, and reproduction and public communication through the actual generated outputs

Suno had already conceded before the verdict that it trained on GEMAs repertoire without paying for it, its entire defense rested on arguing that training simply doesnt require a license in the first place, the court flatly rejected that argument, judge Elke Schwager also noted it was undisputed that Suno obtained its training data through stream ripping, meaning downloading audio directly off the open web rather than acquiring it through any licensed channel, that concession and finding together did most of the work in deciding the case

The rulings jurisdictional reach is genuinely the more consequential part for the industry, the court asserted authority over training that physically happened in the United States, relying on a special venue rule in Germanys Collecting Societies Act that gives organizations like GEMA a privileged court venue, the reasoning was that because the disputed songs were effectively stored within AI models hosted on servers in Germany and served to EU users, German and EU law applied regardless of where the actual training took place, if that holding survives appeal it means any AI company with EU users faces potential collecting society litigation no matter where their models were originally built and trained

GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmuller was blunt in his response, saying AI models built on stolen intellectual property have no protection under the law, and that AI service providers must pay for licenses rather than helping themselves to our members work for free, this is actually GEMAs second consecutive win against a major AI company, the same Munich chamber ruled in GEMAs favor against OpenAI back in November over unauthorized use of song lyrics, Suno retains the right to appeal, and the case lands right in the middle of separate ongoing US litigation Suno faces from Sony Music and Universal Music Group, whose legal teams are reportedly giving this German verdict very close scrutiny as they weigh their own next moves stateside

German court rules AI music generator Suno broke copyright ruleswww.euronews.com

[RustyHawk]

The jurisdictional finding is genuinely the part that should worry every AI company far more than the six specific songs at issue here, asserting authority over US based training because outputs reach EU users is a sweeping legal theory that could apply to basically any AI company with European customers

[RandyOrton]

Suno conceding it never paid for the training data and then arguing training itself doesnt need a license at all was always going to be a hard sell once a court actually had to weigh that argument directly, that's a fairly aggressive legal position to stake an entire defense on

[DarkKnight66]

Stream ripping being the actual method used to acquire training data is a detail that undercuts a lot of the more sophisticated sounding fair use arguments AI companies tend to make, this wasnt some ambiguous scraping method, it was straightforwardly downloading audio without permission

[Rhys74]

This being GEMAs second consecutive win against a major AI company after the OpenAI ruling in November shows a genuinely consistent pattern from this specific Munich chamber, European collecting societies clearly have real institutional momentum building against unlicensed AI training right now