{"id":17333,"date":"2017-02-14T17:26:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T17:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.compumark.com\/?p=17333\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T12:56:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:56:18","slug":"michael-jordan-slam-dunks-china-trademark-case-despite-changing-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/blog\/michael-jordan-slam-dunks-china-trademark-case-despite-changing-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Jordan slam dunks China trademark case, despite changing laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just this month, the news came through that China\u2019s Supreme People\u2019s Court (SPC) had ruled<\/a> the names of public figures would not be allowed on trademarks. According to the court, \u201cpublic figures in fields such as politics, economics, culture, religion and ethnic affairs\u201d would not be allowed to be included in trademarks due to the \u201cadverse influence\u201d that doing so may cause.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a ruling that seems to make logical sense \u2014 especially when you consider the recent efforts made by Donald Trump and the Kardashian family in attempting to trademark their surnames overseas \u2014 but it also seems to contradict the recent case in China involving the legendary basketball player Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n

The case, which concluded in December 2016, saw Jordan suing the Chinese company Qiaodan Sports for misuse of his name \u2014 \u2018Qioadan\u2019 is the Chinese word for \u2018Jordan\u2019, and has been used by Chinese media since the 1980s to refer to the basketball player. Jordan took further shots at Qiaodan for using his \u201823\u2019 jersey number and his famous \u2018Jumpman\u2019 logo on its merchandise, and claimed that such misuse had allowed the company\u2019s revenue to grow from $45.6 million in 2007 to a huge $456.3 million in 2010.<\/p>\n

After being rejected by several Chinese courts, Jordan eventually went to the SPC, who found that Qiaodan Sports had indeed misused his name for its own benefit \u2014 although admittedly, only three of the 68 trademark cases he brought to the court were found to be in breach of law. The ruling was a total slam-dunk from Jordan\u2019s perspective, and Jed Ferdinand, founder and senior managing partner at law firm Ferdinand IP told IP Watchdog<\/a> that the decision was \u201ca big step for American brand owners looking to protect their marks in China\u201d. But it also comes in stark contrast to the new \u2018no VIPS\u2019 rule implemented by the SPC \u2014 the very same court that ruled in favour of the Jordan case.<\/p>\n

Although the rule doesn\u2019t come in to effect until March 1, it\u2019ll be interesting to observe whether there\u2019s a shift in attitudes from China when it comes to similar cases in the future. Public figures are constantly seeking to protect their names overseas, but the SPC might have just made that process a whole lot more difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just this month, the news came through that China\u2019s Supreme People\u2019s Court (SPC) had ruled the names of public figures would not be allowed on trademarks. According to the court,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[706],"tags":[30,248,36,80,180],"class_list":["post-17333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trademarks","tag-compumark","tag-qioadan","tag-trademark-infringement","tag-trademark-protection","tag-trademark-watching"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":17333},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290175,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17333\/revisions\/290175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/intellectual-property\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}