Judge Elke Schwager at the Munich District Court said OpenAI, the US company that owns ChatGPT, would be charged damages for the unauthorized use. He did not specify an amount.
Both the plaintiffs and the German journalists’ trade union claimed the case could have far-reaching effects on AI or large language models and intellectual property and copyright laws.
The decision can be appealed.
“We do not agree with the decision and are investigating further steps,” OpenAI said in response. He said it respects intellectual property rights and is in talks with relevant organizations around the world.
What was the matter about?
GEMA, the German association that protects authors’ rights, filed a lawsuit.
author rights law (or copyright in German) is distinct from and should not be confused with the more commonly understood Anglo-American copyright law. It places greater emphasis on the individual artist or author and considers the rights to be non-transferrable, rather than the property of the content’s owner (such as a publisher or record label).
GEMA used nine specific songs as examples for the purposes of the case, including titles such as “Manner (Main)” by Herbert Grönmeyer, “In der Weihnachtsbacherie (In the Christmas Bakery)” by Rolf Zhukovsky and “Atemlos (Breathless)” originally by Christina Bach and more recently popularized by Helen Fischer.
Although the case concerns only German law and usage, one of GEMA’s lawyers claimed that Tuesday’s decision would prove unprecedented for the whole of Europe, noting that the applicable rules were “harmonised”. He said he hopes to negotiate with companies like OpenAI on an appropriate licensing fee.
“We are of course extremely pleased that the Chamber has issued such a clear ruling,” GEMA lawyer Kai Velp told reporters. “The goal is not to remove anything from the market, but to receive fair compensation.”
GEMA made international headlines nearly a decade ago due to its restrictive approach towards German music videos on YouTube, although an agreement was eventually reached to allow their publication on the platform.
Judge baffled by ‘highly intelligent’ defendants’ mistakes
In handing down her decision, Judge Schwager said she was surprised that OpenAI did not take into account what she called a clear legal position.
“We have highly intelligent defendants who have managed to create the most modern technology,” Schwager said.
Anyone who creates something and uses external content in doing so has to pay for that content or otherwise obtain permission, he said, which suggests that current use is tantamount to unlicensed distribution and reproduction.
“Authors’ rights are protected intellectual property,” Klager said. “And so it’s clear this is out of order.”
On what grounds did OpenAI dispute the allegations?
During the trial neither party disputed that the song’s lyrics were used to “train” the fourth version of ChatGPT.
The issue was whether the lyrics were actively stored in the larger language model’s database for future use.
OpenAI argued that ChatGPT did not store or copy specific training data, but rather reflected in its parameters what it had learned across its entire training dataset. It was also argued that the “outputs” from ChatGPT answering user questions were generated only in response to user prompts and so if anyone was responsible for their generation it would be the user rather than OpenAI.
The court found that the accidental generation of text that exactly or in large part matched the song’s lyrics was not laudable.
“Given the complexity and length of the song’s text, coincidence can be ruled out as the reason for the reproduction of the song’s lyrics,” the court wrote in a press release.,
German journalists’ union signals wider implications
Several media organizations also questioned the validity of the training processes of large language models, including journalism among the sources used.
DJV’s Mika Bester, president of a prominent journalists trade union, called Tuesday’s decision “a partial victory for writers’ rights.”
“Training AI models is intellectual property theft,” Beister said, arguing that the legal position of journalists seeking compensation from companies like OpenAI would now improve.
Correction, November 11, 2025: An earlier version of this story referred to “In der Weihnachtsbacherei” as a song by Reinhard May. This has now been fixed and we apologize for the mistake.
Edited by: Dmytro Lyubenko
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