After two court decisions ruled in favor of Qiaodan, Jordan appealed to the Beijing court, which reaffirmed the original decision in the verdict published in Chinese media and translated by Quartz.
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Basketball legend Michael Jordan’s trademark violation lawsuit against a Chinese company using a similar name and logo to his Nike-produced brand was dismissed by a court in Beijing.
Jordan, a six-time National Basketball Association champion with the Chicago Bulls, retired from the sport in 2003.
While Jordan, whose personal brand Air Jordan is a division of Nike, demanded the imitator deregister the name in China. Qiaodan Sports has built a business off my Chinese name, the number 23, and even attempted to use the names of my children, without authorization.
Qiaodan Sportswear was registered in 2000 and has since used the trademark “Qiaodan”, which is equivalent to the commonly used Chinese translation for Jordan.
The image of the disputed trademark is a human body in a shadowy design, which does not clearly reflect the major appearances of the figure. A spokesman at Qiaodan Sports declined to comment on the court ruling when contacted by Quartz on July 29.
In a trademark lawsuit that has been three years in the making against a Chinese shoe company, Michael Jordan has suffered a defeat. In 2012, the sportswear maker had more than 5,700 outlets, brought in $276 million in revenue, and was preparing to raise 5 million (paywall) in a public listing in the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Jordan said that Chinese consumers “deserve to be protected from being misled, and they should know exactly what they are buying”, according to a statement he released in 2012, news website yahoo.com reported in May 2012.
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Jordan wasn’t the only one that filed a suit, as Qiaodon Sports ended up filing a counter-suit against Jordan back in 2013.
