German court rules ChatGPT violated copyright law by reproducing lyrics
A German court ruled that OpenAI's ChatGPT violated copyright law by memorising and reproducing protected German song lyrics in response to simple prompts, without proper licensing. The court found OpenAI liable for damages and ordered injunctive relief, marking what GEMA described as a landmark AI copyright ruling in Europe.
What happened
The Munich I Regional Court ruled on 11 November 2025 that OpenAI's ChatGPT violated German copyright law by reproducing protected lyrics from nine well-known German songs including Herbert Grönemeyer's 'Männer' and Helene Fischer's 'Atemlos Durch die Nacht'.
The court found that ChatGPT had memorised copyright-protected texts by encoding them in model parameters, and that when the model output essential and original elements of these texts in response to simple prompts, this constituted further reproduction under copyright law.
Reported impact
The court granted injunctive relief and information claims, and found OpenAI liable for damages, with the quantum yet to be determined.
GEMA said it hopes to negotiate with OpenAI on how copyright holders could be compensated.
Index analysis
The court ruled that memorisation of protected texts within the model parameters constituted reproduction under Section 16 of the German Copyright Act and Article 2 of the InfoSoc Directive, rejecting OpenAI's argument that the model only learned statistical patterns.
The court determined that providing outputs to users further constituted making the work available to the public, and that the text and data mining exception did not apply in this case.
Governance controls
The judgment is not yet final.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.