software Defeat for ChatGPT over copyright in Germany
A German court puts the brakes on OpenAI and its artificial intelligence ChatGPT. The use of song lyrics by the US company violates copyright law in the eyes of the judges at the Munich Regional Court.
11.11.2025, 10:31
11.11.2025, 10:59
SDA
In doing so, they upheld a lawsuit brought by the German collecting society Gema, which had specifically sued over nine music hits. The songs included well-known titles such as "Atemlos", "Männer" by Herbert Grönemeyer, "Über den Wolken" by Reinhard Mey and "In der Weihnachtsbäckerei" by Rolf Zuckowski. The verdict is not yet final.
The texts had been used to train ChatGPT and had been reproduced exactly or at least largely identically in response to simple requests to the system. The court considered this to be evidence that the texts had been stored in OpenAI's systems.
Among other things, it ordered OpenAI to refrain from storing the texts and outputting them in its models. The company was also ordered to pay damages and to disclose information about the use and the revenue generated from it.
Potential impact far beyond song lyrics
It is considered likely that the ruling will be appealed and that further instances will be involved. The final decision could have an impact far beyond song lyrics, as expert Silke von Lewinski from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition explained prior to the decision. She sees "fundamental significance for all works, be it literature, journalistic texts, music, visual art, photography or any other work that is used for Generative AI. This is about how the existing laws should be interpreted."
If Gema were to win in the last instance, this would shift the balance of power between the creative industries and technology companies a little in favor of authors and other rights holders, she said with conviction. "Before a text can be used for Generative AI, the rights holders would then have to give their consent and would have the opportunity to receive remuneration for it."
This is probably exactly what Gema is aiming for with its lawsuit.
Memorized or not?
The fact that the AI was trained with the nine songs was undisputed in the trial. What happened afterwards, however, was a central question. Was the song data memorized, i.e. saved and thus duplicated - or did the training with the data result in ChatGPT recreating the song lyrics without having saved them?
The court took a clear position and considered the fact that the system output the lyrics with which it had been trained as evidence that it must have memorized the lyrics. An accidental output was ruled out.
