Suno Loses Landmark AI Lawsuit to German Performing Rights Society GEMA

Germany’s music rights organization, GEMA, has secured yet another significant legal victory in its ongoing battle against artificial intelligence firms accused of exploiting creative works without authorization. On Friday, the Munich Regional Court ruled against Suno, a generative music platform, determining that the company violated both German and U.S. copyright statutes by training its algorithms on songs from GEMA’s extensive repertoire and by storing and reproducing those compositions. This decision adds to a rapidly expanding body of European case law signaling that AI developers cannot treat copyrighted material as an unlimited, free resource.

While the court has yet to publish its full written rationale, GEMA’s public announcement makes clear that the ruling obligates AI providers to obtain paid licenses for any “systematic use” of its catalog and for commercial exploitation—covering not only the initial training phase but also the subsequent generation of audio outputs. Dr. Tobias Holzmüller, GEMA’s chief executive, described the outcome as a defining moment for the industry. “Today, the Chamber made one thing crystal clear: AI models built on stolen intellectual property have no protection under the law,” he said. “AI service providers must pay for licenses rather than helping themselves to our members’ works free of charge.” He further asserted that the verdict “has significantly strengthened Europe’s position as a cultural centre.” The litigation centered on just six tracks—“Atemlos,” “Daddy Cool,” “Rasputin,” “Big in Japan,” “Forever Young,” and “Mambo No. 5”—which GEMA argued could be reproduced almost identically through straightforward prompts on Suno, despite the platform’s stated mission of generating entirely new audio.

GEMA, which represents roughly 100,000 composers, songwriters, and publishers, also accused Suno of “ingesting” those members’ works for model training without appropriate authorization—a charge the company partially conceded in 2024. In a court filing from that year, Suno acknowledged that its training data included “essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet, abiding by paywalls, password protections, and the like.” That admission surfaced amid a separate U.S. lawsuit filed by the three major labels—Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group. Notably, Warner struck a licensing deal with Suno in November, but Universal and Sony remain plaintiffs in that ongoing case, which is expected to reach a decision next year. Suno has not yet responded to requests for comment on the Munich ruling.

This latest triumph arrives roughly nine months after GEMA’s successful action against OpenAI, which had similarly trained its models on unlicensed lyrics. Though the damages in that earlier dispute were never disclosed, GEMA’s broader ambition is to establish a comprehensive legal framework within the European Union that addresses AI companies’ past use of copyrighted content and lays groundwork for future compliance. To that end, the organization has proposed a licensing system for AI music usage and issued a charter outlining various approaches to AI governance. The wider AI industry has long leaned on the “fair use” doctrine, particularly in the U.S., which permits unlicensed use of copyrighted material if it results in transformative, original output—a defense AI firms frequently invoke. However, copyright holders counter that these companies could not exist without prior creative labor. As ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, president of international rights society CISAC, recently remarked: “These tools are extraordinary, but they could not have been built without us.”

The financial stakes are considerable. Suno recently raised $400 million in a Series D round, valuing the company at $5.4 billion. Meanwhile, a separate case against Anthropic—the firm behind the Claude platform, which has been valued at nearly $1 trillion—concluded with a record $1.5 billion settlement to a coalition of authors, the largest copyright payout in American history. The judge in that instance ruled that Anthropic’s training constituted fair use but that the company had pirated the underlying works to achieve it. Suno faces similar allegations following a 404 Media report on a hack of its internal data, which suggested the company illegally scraped content from YouTube. Another potential legal avenue for rightsholders involves “market dilution”—arguing that unlicensed use harms the current or future market for the original work. If proven that Suno has negatively impacted the streaming market, it could pose an existential threat to emerging generative platforms. Yet some voices urge pragmatism. Artist and researcher Matt Dryhurst wrote in a recent essay: “Rather than getting upset about the potentially lost cause of training data, maybe this is a time to think about what you want the world to look like, factoring we will live with increasingly powerful AI models at our fingertips.” Suno itself remains defiant, declaring on its website: “Music doesn't stop. Neither do we.”