A pivotal European case on AI music copyright is approaching its conclusion, with the Munich Regional Court expected to deliver a verdict on July 31 in the lawsuit brought by GEMA, Germany's music collecting society, against US-based Suno AI.

Filed in January 2025, the lawsuit alleges that Suno trained its AI models on copyrighted music without obtaining licenses or compensating rights holders. The case is one of the first major global tests of how traditional copyright law applies to AI music training and outputs.

GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmüller stated that the goal is not to eliminate Suno but to enter licensing negotiations on equal footing. He described Suno as 'by far the largest and commercially most successful of all AI music models' with a 'much more aggressive business strategy.'

During proceedings, GEMA demonstrated that Suno AI generated tracks nearly identical to copyrighted songs like 'Forever Young' and 'Mambo No. 5' when prompted with original lyrics. Suno admitted these songs were part of its training data.

Martin Senftleben, professor of intellectual property law at Amsterdam Law School, noted the significance of the case being brought by a collecting society, which represents a broader group of rights holders. GEMA represents over 95,000 composers and 2 million rights holders worldwide.

Suno's platform generates roughly 7 million songs daily, with 75,000 ending up on streaming services. Holzmüller warned this is 'toxic for the music ecosystem' and proposed pricing AI outputs to ensure fair competition with human-created music.

Source: www.dw.com