Case summary
- Plaintiff
- GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte)
- Defendant
- OpenAI OpCo, LLC and OpenAI Ireland Ltd.
- Court
- Landgericht München I (Munich Regional Court, 42nd Civil Division)
- Filed
- November 2024
- Decided
- November 2024 (declaratory judgment for GEMA)
- Claim type
- Copyright infringement — output reproduction of song lyrics
- Status
- Decided in favor of GEMA on output infringement; appeal pending
TL;DR
GEMA tested ChatGPT's recall of nine well-known German songs in its repertoire — including works by Herbert Grönemeyer and Reinhard Mey — and obtained near-verbatim output. The Munich Regional Court held that the reproduction infringed and rejected OpenAI's argument that the EU text-and-data-mining exception (Art. 4 DSM Directive) extended from training to memorized generative output.
The court reasoned that once a copyrighted work is encoded into the model in a manner that allows near-verbatim regurgitation, the exception's purpose — temporary processing for analysis — no longer applies. Liability attaches to OpenAI as the operator deploying the model. The decision is the first European court to squarely hold an LLM operator liable for memorized lyrical output.
Why it matters
- The TDM exception has limits. Article 4 of the DSM Directive shields training; it does not shield outputs that reproduce protected expression. European AI labs must now treat output filtering as a legal requirement, not a product choice.
- Collecting societies have standing. GEMA sued on behalf of its membership and obtained a declaratory judgment without individual rights-holder plaintiffs. Other European societies (SACEM, SIAE, PRS) are watching.
- Munich is now an AI forum. The Landgericht München I has experienced IP chambers and a track record of pro-rights-holder rulings. Expect more European AI plaintiffs to file there.
- U.S. courts will look at this. The output-infringement theory parallels Authors Guild v. OpenAI in the SDNY. The reasoning is exportable.
More to come
Full case tracker — including the appeal docket, the appellant's brief, and the parallel parties-list filings — coming soon. Sign up for ruling alerts to be notified when the next decision lands.