What happened
On 31 July 2026 the Regional Court Munich I largely granted the claims of GEMA, the German collecting society for composers, lyricists and music publishers, against the AI music service Suno. The 42nd civil chamber ruled in case 42 O 763/25 on six songs, among them "Daddy Cool", "Forever Young" and "Rasputin", and granted injunction, information and damages claims.
The court found the six songs reproducibly contained in Suno model versions v3.5 and v4, stored on servers in Germany. The text-and-data-mining exception in section 44b of the German Copyright Act did not cover that, and US fair use did not cover the training in the United States. Outputs with recognisable parts of the songs were also infringing, and the court held Suno, not its users, responsible for them.
Why it matters
A maker who scores a film with a generated track is not the party this ruling holds liable. The output can still be the infringing copy: the court treated recognisable outputs as unauthorised reproductions, and a film carries its soundtrack to every screening in Germany. GEMA also won a Munich case against OpenAI in November 2025, which OpenAI has appealed to the Munich Higher Regional Court.
Still open
The court's press release states that the judgment is not final. As of 11 November 2026, the fully reasoned judgment had not been found on the court's site, and no Suno appeal was confirmed.