I. General information
Date of Judgement: 27.09.2024
Issuing Authority: Regional Court of Hamburg, Germany
Category: Copyright – Copyright infringement of AI training data
Plaintiff/Appellant: Robert Kneschke
Defendant/Respondent: LAION e.V.
Keyworks: AI; text mining; data mining; training data; lawful access; Copyright Act; Germany
II. Dispute
The German photographer, Robert Kneschke, discovered that his photographic works had been used in the LAION-5B dataset developed by the non-profit organization LAION e.V., for the purpose of training generative AI models such as Stable Diffusion. Mr. Kneschke did not permit the use of his works for this purpose and filed a lawsuit against LAION e.V. at the Hamburg Regional Court on April 27, 2023.
III. Legal basis
Section 60d of the German Copyright Act.
IV. Judgement
On September 27, 2024, the Hamburg Regional Court ruled in favor of LAION e.V., determining that the use of Mr. Kneschke's works for non-profit scientific research purposes fell within the text and data mining exception under European Union copyright law.
V. Remarks
According to German law:
• If the text/data mining is for scientific research purposes, and the user has lawful access, it is permitted.
• In all other cases (e.g., commercial purposes, training AI to sell services), it is still permitted, unless the copyright holder has explicitly stated their objection (opt-out).
