Munich’s regional court ruled that suno’s training on gema’s catalog infringes copyright, the first…
munich’s regional court ruled that suno’s training on gema’s catalog infringes copyright, the first european ruling to pin liability on an ai company for its training data. it ordered revenue disclosure and damages, applying german law to the service and us law to the training.
the ‘trained offshore’ defense just lost its first test.
Context
Verified date: the Munich Regional Court I (Landgericht Muenchen I) decided GEMA v Suno, case 42 O 763/25, on Jul 31, 2026. Bird & Bird calls it the first European case on a generative AI music tool, and says the court largely followed GEMA's claims. The Bavarian justice ministry's press release says the 42nd civil chamber upheld GEMA's claims for injunction, information and damages against Suno.
Mayer Brown's summary (Aug 11, 2026) says the court held that training an AI model with copyrighted works without a license infringes copyright if the model reproduces those works in outputs on relatively simple prompts.
The ruling is dated Jul 31, 2026, not this week. Infringement, information and damages are in the court's decision as the sources describe it. The holding is tied to the model reproducing works on relatively simple prompts, which is narrower than liability for training in general. The post's split between German law for the service and US law for the training, and the 'trained offshore' defense, were not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted. in the excerpts read. 'The trained offshore defense just lost its first test' is the author's opinion.
Related work
- WIPO Lex: GEMA v Suno case summary ↗Case 42 O 763/25.
- Bavarian state law database: LG Muenchen I judgment of Jul 31, 2026 ↗Judgment text.
- Judgment PDF, 42 O 763/25 ↗Full text.
Watch next
- Read the judgment for which country's law applied to the training.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 1 October 2026 at 12:19 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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