I would like to ask, if I use one or two lyrics or ancient poems on the outer packaging of a product, will it create a legal dispute?

No, there is no dispute about ancient poems. Lyrics require the author's consent and are copyrighted.

Some indie labels and musicians entrust other record labels or copyright agents to handle distribution in a certain region, which makes it difficult to ascertain the specifics of the authorization between the copyright owner and the agent, whether it includes the use of new media, the duration of the authorization, and the region in which the authorization is granted, etc. To minimize such disputes, it is important to have a clear understanding of the legal issues involved. The only way to minimize such copyright disputes is to be as clear as possible about the source copyright holder and the corresponding proof of copyright. Especially in China, the information provided by the licensor often lacks information about the source copyright holder.

When it comes to lyrics and music copyright, it's even more complicated, as it should include 100% of the lyricist's rights and 100% of the songwriter's rights, with the lyricist and the songwriter likely to be signed to different music copyright companies. And when the song is covered and adapted, there may be lyrics that inherit the rights of the author and the arranger, and then the rights are split again. The end result is that a song may be controlled by several copyright companies in varying proportions, and as long as it is not collectively licensed by those companies, it is not considered to have full rights.

Copyright Collective Management Organizations

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization have established an unofficial body called CISAC (International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers). In order to protect the intellectual rights of music creators from being infringed upon, some countries have set up music copyright collective management organizations to join the CISAC alliance, such as China's Music Composition Society (MCSC), Taiwan's TMCS, Hong Kong's CASH, South Korea's KOMCA, and Japan's JSRAC, all of which belong to this type of music copyright collective management organization. (The official websites of copyright collective management organizations in most countries use org domain names. The MCSC seems to be special, but in fact it still belongs to an unofficial organization, just with the background of the National Copyright Administration.)

Songwriters and music copyright companies join the respective collective management organizations as members and entrust the collective management organizations to collect part of the royalties on their copyrights, and the collective management organizations take a certain percentage of the royalties as operating expenses. Different copyright collective management organizations can enter into mutual representation agreements. If JSRAC in Japan enters into a mutual representation agreement with CASH in Hong Kong, then part of the royalties for the use of CASH members' works in Japan will be collected on behalf of JSRAC, and vice versa.

I emphasized above that these copyright collective management organizations only collect partial royalties on their behalf, as most of them only collect royalties on behalf of the three public ****use copyrights, including the public ****performance right, the public ****broadcasting right, and the public ****transmission right. There are a few exceptions, such as independent songwriters who have entrusted all of their rights to a collective management organization. As for the specific applications of these three rights, things like concert performances, radio broadcasts, malls/supermarkets/hotels/bars... The royalties for the use of background music, etc. So currently in the field of new media, most of the royalties for lyrics and music copyrights have little to do with copyright collective management organizations.

The collective copyright management organization approach is also unscientific, because most of the royalties collected in China are not collected according to the usage statistics of the songs, and the royalties collected in this way tend to become a muddled account when they are distributed to the songwriters or copyright companies, and ultimately, the interests of the songwriters may not be truly safeguarded.