Munich court finds Suno infringed GEMA songs and orders revenue disclosure

A Munich court ruled on 31 July that Suno infringed copyrights represented by GEMA and ordered the AI music platform to disclose revenue tied to the songs at issue before damages are calculated. The case centred on six works, including Atemlos, Daddy Cool, Big in Japan, Mambo No. 5 and Forever Young, as well as the refrain from Mambo No. 5. Variety reported the ruling. The court found that Suno infringed copyrights represented by GEMA by training its models on GEMA-represented songs and reproducing them on demand. GEMA said the infringement reflected systematic use of its repertoire and commercial exploitation without giving authors a financial share. Suno had already acknowledged that it trained on GEMA’s repertoire without paying for it, but argued that training did not require a licence. The court rejected that defence. A later legal analysis by Two Birds said the judges treated memorisation in model parameters as reproduction, held that an exact copy was not required and said the text-and-data-mining exception did not apply because Suno lacked lawful access after using YouTube stream-ripping and defeating the platform’s Rolling Cipher download restriction. The court also took a broad view of jurisdiction. It held that German law could reach U.S.-conducted training because the training data were stored in the model and the outputs were served to users in Germany. According to the same analysis, the court also rejected fair use and found Suno liable for acts tied to both training and output generation. The judge ordered Suno to disclose the revenue tied to the six works, a step intended to show which slice of its income traced back to GEMA’s repertoire. Claims Journal reported that damages have not yet been quantified. Suno said it disagreed with the ruling and was evaluating an appeal to a higher German court, while first-instance judgments in Germany can still be enforced during an appeal. GEMA filed the case in January 2025 after asking Suno to licence its repertoire and receiving no response. The collecting society says it represents more than 100,000 composers, lyricists and publishers, and it describes the lawsuit as a test case meant to establish a licensing model for training, output generation and further use. For context, Forbes reported that Suno has a $5.4 billion valuation, about 2 million paid subscribers and roughly $300 million in annual recurring revenue.