The Munich District Court I fully upheld the collecting society GEMA on Friday, July 31, 2026, in the legal dispute against music AI provider Suno. The 42nd Civil Chamber ruled that both training and reproducing six protected compositions without a license violate German copyright law. Suno must stop doing so and is reportedly considering an appeal.
Two violations: storage during training, reproduction in output
GEMA had already filed the lawsuit in January 2025 under case number 42 O 763/25. At the center were six works from GEMA’s repertoire, including “Atemlos durch die Nacht,” “Daddy Cool,” “Mambo No. 5,” and “Cheri Cheri Lady.” According to an analysis by trade publication Legal Tribune Online, the court identified two distinct violations: storing the works inside the AI model breaches the reproduction right under Section 16 of the German Copyright Act, while outputting them to users breaches the right of communication to the public under Section 15(2).
Suno had invoked the text-and-data-mining exception under German law as well as the US fair use principle. The chamber accepted neither argument: the complexity of the musical works ruled out coincidental occurrences in the output, and extensive memorization of entire works goes beyond what the text-and-data-mining exception allows. According to Legal Tribune Online, the same chamber had already ruled similarly in November 2025 in a case brought by GEMA against OpenAI over the reproduction of song lyrics by ChatGPT.
GEMA demands licenses, Suno announces an appeal
“AI models built on the theft of intellectual property are not protected by the legal system,” GEMA chairman Tobias Holzmüller said, according to the collecting society’s official press release. General counsel Kai Welp added that the AI systems examined “apparently store nearly complete works to a significant extent.” GEMA sees the ruling as confirmation of its demand that providers of generative music AI acquire licenses and share revenue with songwriters and composers.
According to a report by ZDF, Suno said it would “explore all available options, including an appeal.” Throughout the proceedings, the company has consistently denied copying copyrighted recordings, arguing its models are trained to generate new music rather than reproduce existing recordings. The ruling is not yet final, and an appeal to the Munich Higher Regional Court is considered likely.
GEMA’s second win against an AI company
The ruling marks GEMA’s second win against a major AI company within a year, following its success against OpenAI in November 2025 over the reproduction of song lyrics by ChatGPT. Internationally, the legal picture remains inconsistent: in the US, Sony Music is separately pursuing its own lawsuit against Suno in a federal court in Boston, after Warner and Universal Music already settled out of court. As beckmann.ai reported in July, German and US courts are weighing the same underlying question under different legal standards. Suno is also under pressure from several data-security incidents: a hack in July 2026 exposed the scraping of millions of YouTube and Deezer clips.
It remains to be seen how Suno will respond to the ruling, whether it will actually file an appeal, and whether the company will eventually agree to a licensing deal with GEMA after all. For other generative music AI providers, the decision is likely to signal that German courts do not treat memorization of training data as mere analysis, but as a use that requires a license.
