Rights Conflict Problems In The Auction Of Celebrities’ Written Messages

Handwritten manuscripts, particularly those of cultural celebrities, are becomingincreasingly scarce with the advent of electronic time. These manuscripts are unique, privateand original in nature. Besides, they can help remedy mistakes and omissions in replicationversions and provide valuable information for exploring the author’s real psychological statein a certain period of time. All these reasons have given rise to the increasingly prominence ofthe manuscripts’ economic value in the collection market. Therefore, more and morecelebrities’ manuscripts flow into the market circulation. And even some living celebrities’manuscripts are also on the sale, for example, the auction of Mo Yan and Jia Pingao’smanuscripts once had drawn the attention of the public. However, along with the hugeeconomic benefits are the difficulties and risks concerning laws: the content of manuscriptsusually shows the authors’ private thoughts, and it will risk releasing the authors’ privacy ifthe manuscripts are put into market before the authors’ agreement; additionally, the auctionsof manuscripts without the authors’ agreement could inform a number of people of theoriginal content of the manuscripts, and this is no doubt a violation of the authors’ publicationright. While the citizens’ consciousness of rights is increasing, the related obigees of themanuscripts are paying more and more attention to their rights. All these lead to the conflictsamong the ownership, right of privacy, and copyright.This paper uses a case analysis structure. It analyses the problems in and differentopinions towards the auction of Qian Zhongshu’s manuscripts, and closely around the caseprovides suggestions on the problems of conflicts of rights related to celebrities’ manuscriptsauctions in civil cases.There are five parts in the paper:The first part introduces the case. This reviews the basic information of the case of QianZhongshu’s manuscripts auction.The second part discusses the focuses of disputes. It mainly introduces the dispute that LiGuoqiang, Sungari International Auction Co., Ltd., and Yang Jiang all provided their legalground for their rights. The former two used "Property Law" and "Auction Law" as theirevidence, and the latter "Copyright Law" and "Law of Succession".The third part introduces the theory of conflict of rights. Take as the starting point thequestion of whether conflict of rights is a false proposition, this part affirms the existence of conflict of rights, and then further analyses the reasons and components of conflict of rights incivil cases.The fourth part is the legal analysis of the present case. With the background of affirmingthe situation of conflict of rights and based on the constitutive requirement of tort liability,this part explores from the actions of Li Guoqiang, Sungari International Auction Co., Ltd.,and Yang Jiang. It confirms the legal nature of the three parties’ actions according to fourrequirements: illegal activity, fact of damage, causal relation between illegal activity and factof damage, and actor’s subjective fault.The fifth part is the conclusion and suggestion part. On the basis of previous analysis itcomes to the conclusion of the present case, and then from four aspects provides suggestionsof disputes resolution for similar cases of celebrities’ manuscripts auctions.