This landmark civil copyright dispute was heard by the Hangzhou Internet Court (2024) Zhe 0192 Min Chu No. 1672, a typical judgment targeting domestic cross-border e-commerce operators that plagiarized original Chinese hand-painted illustration works for printed home textile sales, without involving any U.S.-based entities. The original copyright holder is independent Chinese illustrator Lin Mo, who completed a set of original oriental flower-and-bird hand-painted artworks in early 2023 and completed voluntary copyright registration at the China Copyright Protection Center, obtaining a national work registration certificate (National Work Registration No. 2024-F-001XXXX). The infringing party is Yunshang Cross-border Co., Ltd., a domestic limited liability company headquartered in Zhejiang Province, operating multiple stores on a mainstream Chinese cross-border e-commerce platform that supplies printed bed sheets, tapestries and cushion covers to Southeast Asian overseas buyers.
1. Article 2 of the Copyright Law of the PRC: Works of Chinese citizens, legal persons or unincorporated organizations shall enjoy copyright immediately upon completion of creation, protected automatically without mandatory registration. Voluntary registration only serves as prima facie ownership evidence in litigationWorld Inte....
2. Article 10 of the Copyright Law: Copyright includes the right of reproduction, right of adaptation and right of information network communication. Printing original illustrations on textile products constitutes reproduction; uploading infringing product pictures to e-commerce store pages falls under the right of information network communication, both exclusive rights owned by the illustrator Lin Mo.
3. Article 53 of the Copyright Law: Anyone who infringes copyright shall bear civil liabilities including cessation of infringement, elimination of impact, apology and compensation for damages. If actual losses or illegal profits cannot be calculated, the court may award statutory compensation ranging from RMB 500 to RMB 5 million, taking infringement scale, subjective malice and commercial profit into comprehensive consideration.
4. Article 119 of the Civil Code of the PRC: Network service providers bear joint and several liability if they fail to adopt timely deletion, blocking or disconnection measures after receiving valid copyright infringement notification (notice-takedown rule).
In March 2024, illustrator Lin Mo’s copyright monitoring agency found that Yunshang Cross-border Co., Ltd. had taken 8 pieces of her original flower-and-bird illustrations, made minor digital adjustments (slight color saturation modification and cropping of blank edges), and used these altered pictures as core product rendering materials for home textile goods sold in its cross-border e-commerce store.
1. The defendant purchased mass-produced printed textiles printed with the plagiarized illustrations from an offline printing factory, and exported thousands of finished products to Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam through cross-border logistics, generating gross sales revenue of approximately RMB 360,000 within half a year.
2. The defendant did not obtain any written licensing contract, oral authorization or royalty payment from the copyright holder Lin Mo; its internal operation records proved the operation team directly downloaded the original high-definition artwork files from the illustrator’s public social media portfolio page, with full access traceability preserved in server logs.
3. After Lin Mo’s legal representative sent a formal written infringement notice with copyright registration certificate, creation source files and notarized webpage screenshots to the e-commerce platform operator, the platform only temporarily hid the store links but failed to fully delete all infringing product listings and prohibit repeated re-uploading, resulting in continuous sales of infringing goods for another 45 days.
The defendant Yunshang Cross-border raised two invalid defenses in court: first, minor digital modification eliminated copyright infringement; second, cross-border sales targeting overseas consumers meant Chinese copyright law had no jurisdiction over its conduct. The Hangzhou Internet Court rejected both defenses with clear legal reasoning.
The court commissioned a professional copyright appraisal institution designated by the National Copyright Administration to compare the original and altered illustrations, and ruled that the core creative expression, unique line strokes, composition layout and exclusive color matching that constitute the originality of the artwork were completely retained. Minor color and cropping adjustments only belonged to trivial technical modifications, which could not avoid the identification of substantial similarity and reproduction infringement under Article 10 of the Copyright Law. This judgment clarified a universal judicial rule: superficial cosmetic changes do not exempt operators from copyright tort liability.
The court held that the defendant’s core infringing acts (downloading domestic original works, uploading infringing pictures to Chinese platform servers, signing printing orders with mainland factories, and completing store operation management within China) all occurred within Chinese territory. Regardless of the final overseas destination of physical goods, China’s copyright law has exclusive jurisdiction over the domestic tort conduct of Chinese legal persons, completely negating the defendant’s overseas sales jurisdiction defense.
After receiving complete, valid infringement notification materials, the e-commerce platform only took temporary hidden measures instead of permanent deletion of infringing links and preventive control over the store account. The court ruled the platform failed to fulfill its reasonable administrative obligation under the Civil Code, and ordered it to bear supplementary compensation liability of 15% of the total damages.
After comprehensive weighing of the defendant’s subjective intentional plagiarism, large sales volume, continuous infringement after receiving notification and the copyright owner’s reasonable litigation costs (notarization fees, appraisal fees, attorney fees), the court issued the following enforceable civil judgment:
1. Order Yunshang Cross-border Co., Ltd. to immediately cease all reproduction, adaptation and information network communication infringement acts; permanently remove all infringing illustration product materials from its cross-border store and platform background server, and recall all unsold infringing textile finished products in domestic warehouses.
2. Order the defendant to issue a written public apology to illustrator Lin Mo on the homepage of the cross-border e-commerce platform for 30 consecutive days to eliminate adverse impacts.
3. Statutory compensation for economic losses and reasonable rights protection expenses totaling RMB 280,000, fully borne by Yunshang Cross-border Co., Ltd.; the cross-border e-commerce platform shall bear supplementary liability for RMB 42,000 of the compensation amount.
4. All litigation fees, copyright appraisal fees and evidence notarization fees incurred during the case shall be borne entirely by the infringing defendant Yunshang Cross-border Co., Ltd.
This case set a clear compliance benchmark for all Chinese domestic cross-border export merchants using graphic illustrations on commodity packaging and product pages:
1. Domestic original artworks are automatically protected by China’s Copyright Law upon creation; operators must obtain formal written licensing agreements with clear royalty clauses before using third-party illustrations for commercial printing and online display.
2. Trivial digital modification of downloaded original pictures cannot constitute independent original creation and will still be identified as copyright infringement by Chinese internet courts.
3. After receiving official copyright infringement notifications from right holders, e-commerce platforms must implement complete link deletion and account risk control instead of temporary hiding, otherwise supplementary tort compensation liability will be imposed.
4. Even if finished goods are exported to overseas markets, all domestic pre-sales infringing conduct (image collection, platform upload, domestic printing) is subject to Chinese copyright judicial jurisdiction, and infringing domestic enterprises cannot evade compensation obligations by claiming overseas consumer-oriented sales.
1. WIPO WIPOLEX Full Official English Text of the 2020 Revised Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China: https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/legislation/details/21065World Inte...
2. National Public Copyright Registration Information Database of China Copyright Protection Center (work registration authenticity inquiry): https://ggzpd.ccopyright.com.cn/registrationPublicity.html
3. Official Website of Hangzhou Internet Court (public judgment search portal for online IP disputes): http://www.hzcy.com.cn/hzintcourt/
4. National Copyright Administration of China Official Website (copyright infringement administrative enforcement rules): https://www.ncac.gov.cn/
