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on august 28, a woman driving a land rover in the laoshan scenic area in qingdao, shandong province, failed to cut in line and slapped the other driver more than a dozen times. on september 3, a reporter from upstream news received a tip from a netizen and found that many e-commerce platforms were selling related car stickers with the promotional text of "qingdao laoshan land rover female driver car sticker".

in response to the reporter's question about whether such car stickers are suspected of infringing the person's portrait rights, merchants responded differently. some argued that they did not use her personal portrait, some said that she was wrong to hit someone, and some were worried about infringement and hurriedly removed the products from the shelves.

lawyers believe that cartoons produced for parties involved in hot events are already clearly recognizable and fall under the protection of portrait rights.

survey: some people don't care about copyright infringement, while others are quick to remove products from shelves

on the morning of september 3, a reporter from upstream news searched a mainstream e-commerce platform with the keywords "land rover woman" and "car stickers" and found a total of 8 stores selling such car stickers. the store with the best sales was "x manman".

the name of the product sold in the store begins with the words "qingdao laoshan land rover female driver car sticker". the main character of the car sticker is a female cartoon head, which is similar to the appearance of the female driver who beat people up and was widely circulated on the internet. the cartoon head is accompanied by teasing words. there are 4 sizes of car stickers, and the prices range from 6.9 yuan to 20.9 yuan. as of 3 pm on the 3rd, the system showed that 48 pieces of this product had been snapped up, and it was marked with the words "sold out soon".

as of 3:00 p.m. on the 3rd, the system showed that 48 pieces of the product had been snapped up, with the words "sold out soon" marked. webpage screenshot

the reporter of upstream news contacted the customer service of the store as a buyer. the customer service said that this car sticker is waterproof and sun-proof, and will not fall off even if the car is washed or rained. the customer can ship it on the same day of ordering, and one person can place multiple orders at the same time. the reporter asked: there are reports that this cartoon car sticker may infringe the portrait rights of the woman in question. will the car owner get into trouble after putting it on? the customer service said that this car sticker does not use her head portrait, and the cartoon head portrait on the car sticker is not the woman in question.

the reporter also found that in several other shops on the e-commerce platform, the product names all use words such as "qingdao laoshan land rover female driver car sticker" as a selling point. the female cartoon images are similar, but the text descriptions are slightly different. some are accompanied by the text "what's wrong with hitting you?" "what's wrong with hitting you!" one shop sold 27 pieces of such car stickers. a single product car sticker can sell dozens of pieces in one or two days, which is considered a good sales volume.

there are quite a few stores on a certain e-commerce platform that sell "qingdao laoshan land rover female driver car stickers". webpage screenshot

on taobao, a reporter from upstream news searched for "land rover woman" and "car sticker" as keywords and found a seller on xianyu. the seller said that the car sticker is made of traceless adhesive and can be shipped on the same day the order is placed. in response to concerns that the car sticker may infringe on the portrait rights of the woman in question, the seller responded that this is a matter of opinion and that she was the first to hit someone.

on douyin mall, upstream news reporters searched for a total of 6 shops, and the product names were also sold with words such as "qingdao laoshan land rover female driver car sticker". despite the popularity, the sales of several shops were mostly in the single digit, and only one shop had 12 pieces. the reporter contacted a shop called x shang car sticker as a buyer. the other party said that the car sticker can be shipped on the same day the order is placed. in response to the concern that the car sticker may infringe the portrait rights of the woman in question, the seller said "it is possible" and said "thank you for the reminder" and "take it off the shelves". 20 minutes later, the reporter entered the store again, and the store's "land rover woman" car sticker had been taken off the shelves.

review: this is not the first time that e-commerce companies have taken advantage of the trend to sell car stickers

upstream news reporters sorted through public reports and found that this kind of thing of selling car stickers by taking advantage of popular trends is not the first time, and many of them have been on hot searches.

in early may 2023, at the entrance of a scenic spot in jinhua, zhejiang, a video about two women who were stopped from cutting in line and went berserk on the spot sparked heated discussions among netizens. the women's controversial words such as "i want to cut in line, we are not easy to mess with" became a hot search. as the popularity of the queue-cutting incident increased, the two women's portraits were made into satirical cartoons and emoticons and circulated widely. some businesses also took advantage of the popularity and sold the cartoons of the two women as car stickers.

according to media reports at the time, searching for keywords such as "queue-cutting" and "car stickers" on taobao platform found more than 30 stores selling car stickers with the theme of two women cartoons, with text such as "don't cut in line, we are not to be trifled with" and "let me tell you there are two types of people i hate the most, one is those who cut in line with me, and the other is those who don't let me cut in line." at the time, a customer service staff of one store said that due to the popularity of the queue-cutting incident, more than a dozen car stickers were sold in a single day.

the two women's portraits, which became popular due to controversial remarks such as "i will cut in line, we are not easy to mess with", were made into cartoon car stickers and sold well.

at the end of january 2024, at xuwen port in zhanjiang, guangdong, the daughter of grandma xu from shandong, who had driven to tibet, posted a video saying that when they were queuing to enter the port to take the ferry, a mercedes-benz owner cut in line, smashed the hood and insulted them. the male owner of the mercedes-benz who cut in line and smashed the car immediately sparked heated discussions among netizens. afterwards, car stickers with the owner's head portrait sold well online and became a "popular style" for a while. although most merchants have censored the face of the mercedes-benz owner on the product introduction page, the face of the portrait on the online car sticker is not mosaiced.

the customer service of a store selling car stickers once told the media that they also have to keep up with the popularity when making car stickers. for example, when the tv series "kuaishou" was popular, the "lao mo, i want to eat fish" and "qiangsheng group" car stickers launched by the store were hot-selling; when the giant panda "ya ya" attracted much attention, the store also launched car stickers with the text "ya ya, we are waiting for you to come home".

statement: selling cartoon products involving characters from hot events may be an infringement

some netizens and businesses believe that the hot-selling car stickers use cartoons, which are far from the face and image of the person involved, and even the person’s photo was not used at the beginning, so it does not infringe on the rights.

peng yanjun, a lawyer at beijing changhong law firm, told the media that some netizens believe that the car stickers are cartoons, not photos of the parties involved, and therefore will not infringe the parties' portrait rights. this view is wrong. article 1018 of the civil code clearly stipulates that a portrait is an identifiable external image of a specific natural person reflected on a certain carrier through images, sculptures, paintings, etc. it can be seen that the most core element of a portrait is recognizability. a portrait does not only include the frontal facial image or real image of a civil subject. the side face, back view, cartoons, etc. that are identifiable can all fall within the scope of protection of portrait rights. he believes that the cartoons of the two women who jumped the queue (in jinhua, zhejiang) are already clearly identifiable, and therefore fall within the scope of protection of portrait rights.

article 1019 of the civil code stipulates that without the consent of the portrait right holder, the portrait of the portrait right holder shall not be produced, used, or disclosed, and the portrait of the portrait right holder shall not be used or disclosed by means of publication, reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, etc. therefore, regardless of whether the cartoon car stickers are for profit, they are suspected of infringing the portrait rights of the parties.

fu jian, director of henan zejin law firm, also told the media that using someone else's portrait without permission and selling it as a car sticker is an infringement. even if someone's face is mosaiced to make a car sticker and sold, it is still an infringement of the portrait rights of others. because the portrait does not only refer to the face, the body is also part of the portrait. although the face is mosaiced when using someone else's portrait, the portrait of the other person can still be recognized through movements, posture, etc., so it is still an infringement of the portrait rights.

regarding the behavior of some netizens who purchased and posted the car sticker, fu jian said that the right of portrait includes use, sale, etc. even if there is no commercial use, unauthorized use of other people's portraits without permission is actually an infringement.

upstream news reporter zhu liang compiled some of the content from shanghai radio and television news square, new yellow river, etc.