Is it considered infringement for AI paper offerings' "family bucket" during this Qingming Festival, when cyber offerings are popular?

How popular is AI right now, exactly? Take a look at these sacrificial goods that have become popular during the Qingming Festival—you can feel it. This year’s Qingming Festival for sweeping graves has seen a number of quite cyberpunk-style approaches; while cloud-sweeping and online mourning continue to flourish, the AI paper-crafted “family bucket” has won the attention of even more people.

E-commerce merchants have printed the icons of popular AI application tools such as deepseek, chatgpt, gemini, openclaw, and others onto the paper-crafted items. The price isn’t cheap: one costs 35 yuan, and the family bucket costs 209 yuan. The AI “compute power” card on these paper-crafted items is also quite hot during this year’s cyberpunk-style grave-sweeping. On the card face, it reads “16GB massive VRAM,” “AI full-compute acceleration,” and “Underworld-exclusive unlimited compute power.” In addition to AI smart applications, these past few years’ popular embodied-intelligence robots, robot vacuum cleaners, and PS5 game consoles are also available in paper-crafted sacrificial versions. Some netizens jokingly said, “Even the underworld is keeping up with the times.”

From the perspective of grave-sweeping culture, the changes in Qingming sacrificial goods are a direct reflection of broader cultural shifts of the era. Qingming grave-sweeping conveys sorrow and remembrance, and it also reflects what the people doing the sweeping think about “a dignified way of life”—a projection of the times onto how people understand “a better life.” In the past, offerings were paper-crafted gold ingots and various kinds of clothing. As the times developed, starting decades ago, paper-crafted TV sets, villas, refrigerators, and small cars became popular. After electronic devices such as mobile phones and computers entered households everywhere, paper-crafted offerings also began to include phones and computers. In the age of artificial intelligence, it seems hardly surprising that Qingming grave-sweeping items include an AI paper-crafted “family bucket.” Behind this wave of cyberpunk-style grave-sweeping trends are both consumers’ curiosity and oddball cravings, and also can’t be separated from some merchants’ marketing tactics that help fan the flames. Whether these luxurious paper-crafted offerings are a necessity for conveying sorrow is something that still needs a question mark, too.

The popularity of cyberpunk-style paper-crafted offerings has also brought some problems. With the brand logos of artificial intelligence displayed as sacrificial items and sold online, can this be considered infringement? Intellectual property lawyer You Yunting believes this needs to be considered case by case. First, the core carrier of burning paper offerings is paper products. In the “International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of Trademark Registration,” they fall under Class 16, specifically corresponding to detailed sub-items such as sacrificial paper-made model houses, sacrificial paperboard model houses, and sacrificial paper-made mock gifts.

For Chinese artificial intelligence companies that appear on the AI paper-crafted “family bucket,” such as DeepSeek (DeepSeek Co., Ltd.), they may protect their trademark rights by applying for recognition as a well-known trademark. But many of the companies on the AI paper-crafted “family bucket” are foreign AI firms. Their trademark situations are more varied. For example, Gemini has an AI trademark, but it cannot be protected across classes. Google has obtained registration rights for Gemini’s trademarks in China in Class 9 (computer software and hardware) and Class 42 (artificial intelligence research and technology services), but it does not have trademark rights for Class 16 paper goods. Moreover, Google’s AI services proactively block IP addresses from Mainland China; since Gemini’s trademark has no usage record domestically, it cannot apply for well-known trademark cross-class protection the way DeepSeek can. As for OpenClaw, commonly called “lobster,” although it has actual use in China, its project founder did not submit any trademark application in China, so there’s no way to protect rights and interests via trademark rights. As for ChatGPT, although its parent company has submitted trademark applications in China, the relevant applications are still under review and have not yet been registered. In addition, within Mainland China, this software cannot be used through normal network methods. Therefore, there are also no usage records domestically for its name and logo, and thus they cannot use protection of rights in an influential name and logo.

“From a judicial practice perspective, Article 59 of China’s Trademark Law provides that the just use of goods’ characteristics is not interfered with by the trademark right holder. Taking one step further, if the right holder truly sues these paper-craft manufacturers, it is not excluded that the court may consider: the core function of a trademark is to distinguish the source of goods, and in sacrificial scenarios, paper models versus real AI services are completely different in market competition, making it very hard to cause any substantial confusion among consumers—therefore they would be recognized as a reasonable use from the standpoint of folk customs and culture.”

Yangzi Evening News | Ziniu News reporter Shen Zhao