Munich Regional Court Rules AI Music Generator Suno Violates Copyright

The Munich Regional Court has ruled that the AI music generator Suno violates copyright through its training and output of music pieces, in a case brought by the German collecting society GEMA. The court found that the six works in question, including 'Atemlos durch die Nacht' and 'Rasputin', were reproducibly embedded in Suno's model versions 3.5 and 4, a phenomenon known as memorization. Rejecting Suno's argument that it only learns mathematical patterns, the court held Suno responsible for the infringing outputs, not the users, because Suno selected the training data and determined the architecture. The court also rejected Suno's defense based on the German text and data mining exception and, applying US law, concluded that fair use does not protect Suno. Notably, the court distinguished this case from the US Bartz and Kadrey decisions, where training outputs did not substantially reproduce the originals. The ruling is not yet final, and other AI music services could be affected. The court also noted that Suno allegedly used stream-ripping techniques to extract songs from YouTube, circumventing the platform's 'Rolling Cipher' protection, which may itself constitute piracy.