Munich Court Rules ChatGPT Infringed Song Lyrics Copyright

A Munich regional court ruled on November 11, 2024, that OpenAI's ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by training its language models on protected song lyrics without permission, marking the first major European court decision on artificial intelligence and music rights.

The 42nd Civil Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court sided with GEMA, Germany's largest music rights organization, which represents more than 100,000 composers, lyricists, and music publishers. GEMA had filed the lawsuit in November 2024, alleging that OpenAI systematically used copyrighted lyrics from its repertoire to train models like GPT-4 and GPT-4o. The case focused on nine well-known German songs, including Herbert Grönemeyer's "Männer," Helene Fischer's "Atemlos durch die Nacht," Kristina Bach's "Atemlos," and Rolf Zuckowski's "Wie schön, dass du geboren bist." The court found that the models memorized and reproduced these lyrics, constituting infringement under Article 2 of the EU's Information Society Directive and Germany's Copyright Act.

In its judgment, the court determined that the memorization of lyrics in the models' parameters amounted to a fixation of the original works, and outputs...