AI music now has a concrete European ruling to measure against. On July 31, Munich Regional Court I largely upheld GEMA’s claims against Suno, ordering injunction, disclosure and damages. The decision is not final.
Six Songs Define The Case
The court named six works, including “Atemlos durch die Nacht,” “Rasputin,” “Big in Japan,” “Forever Young,” the refrain of “Mambo No. 5 A little bit of,” and “Daddy Cool.” Lyrics were not at issue; the dispute covered musical works.
GEMA prompted Suno with the original lyrics, musical style and title, but no melody, harmony, rhythm or arrangement. The court still recognized original elements in the outputs and said coincidence was excluded given the works’ length and complexity.
"mathematically learned patterns and generalized features"
Suno argued that its model stored only learned mathematical patterns and generalized features. The court instead found reproducible memorization in Suno v3.5 and v4.
The Platform Cannot Hide Behind Prompts
The platform also tried to shift responsibility to users. The court rejected that view because Suno operates the models, chose the training works, controls the architecture and is responsible for memorization.
Another detail matters for AI training debates: the court said Suno used stream-ripping techniques to extract works from YouTube and bypassed Rolling Cipher, a technical protection meant to prevent audio and video downloads.
A Narrow But Hard Signal
Fair use did not rescue Suno either. The court distinguished US cases such as Bartz and Kadrey because those training datasets were not made substantially accessible through outputs. Here, simple prompts generated works substantially similar to originals.
The practical signal is narrow but strong: if protected works can be extracted or recognized in output, a platform will struggle to defend itself with broad claims about learning style. The next test is appeal, product filtering and licensing negotiations.
Sources: Munich Regional Court I press release, GEMA v. Suno public materials, The Decoder, Xinhua, CocoLoop; checked docket, six works, Suno v3.5/v4, stream-ripping and Rolling Cipher, fair-use defense and non-final status.