German court says Suno infringed copyrights through training and output

A Munich court ruled that AI music generator Suno violated copyrights through both training and outputs, giving Germany’s music rights organization GEMA a partial victory. The ruling is not final, but it could matter for other music-generation services if it survives appeal.

The case focused on six well-known songs. The court found that Suno’s version 3.5 and 4 models reproducibly contained the musical compositions and that simple prompts could produce outputs in which the original elements were recognizable. Suno argued that its models store generalized patterns rather than songs, but the court ruled out coincidence.

The court also rejected Suno’s argument that users, not the company, were responsible for infringing outputs. It said Suno operated the models, chose training data, and substantively determined the outputs.

Suno invoked Germany’s text-and-data-mining exception and US fair use. The court rejected both in this case, distinguishing it from US training decisions where protected works were not substantially reproduced for users.