Philipp Schröder-Ringe, LL.M.

Update on the article "Do you hear the same?": On 9 March, GEMA and the US company Suno Inc. had their first exchange of blows at Munich Regional Court I on the question of the extent to which AI-generated music infringes the rights of authors of protected musical works.

Digitalisation and, in particular, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) pose new challenges for copyright law. On 11 November 2025, the 42nd Civil Chamber of the Regional Court of Munich I, which specialises in copyright law, issued a landmark ruling in the case "GEMA v. OpenAI". It thus strengthens the position of authors vis-à-vis AI providers and obliges OpenAI to cease and desist and potentially pay damages for the use of copyrighted song lyrics in the training and operation of its language models. The judgement is not legally binding, but has a signal effect for the entire industry

GEMA sues Suno Inc's AI music tool for unauthorised processing of protected musical works.

In its judgement, the Higher Regional Court of Schleswig ruled that the operator of an online shop must ensure that a clickable link to the so-called ODR platform, the internet platform for online dispute resolution, is set up and that its functionality is monitored. The court considered a one-month monitoring cycle to be sufficient. If the functionality is not checked at least once a month, there is a culpable violation of the cease-and-desist declaration.

As part of the Clubcommission's Free Open Air Workshop, Philipp Schröder-Ringe and Tjade Elix will give a lecture on the legal basis of open air events.

The Arnsberg Regional Court (Case No. I-3 S 103/20) ruled at the hearing on 8 December 2021 that the underage plaintiffs were not entitled to monetary compensation because photos from a joint holiday were available in a public folder on Facebook for many years.