Chinese Michael Jordan lookalike brand sued by Jordan and Nike
Yesterday during Chinese media monitoring on behalf of a sportswear client, we encountered an article published on Sina’s finance channel concerning a fake Chinese Michael Jordan sportswear brand in Fujian province. The established Chinese sportswear brand called Qiao Dan (乔丹 — this is a phonetic transliteration of the phonemes for “Jordan” into Mandarin Chinese) is incorporated in Jinjiang, Fujian Province. Qiao Dan’s company’s website can be found here. Qiao Dan’s logo and CI has a distinctively NBA and Michael Jordan style (compare it to Nike’s Jordan brand). Qiao Dan’s tagline is “Beyond Yourself”.
The story is indicative of general Chinese intellectual property issues around famous western names, and first-to-register legal protections commonly granted to Chinese “shanzhai” or lookalike brands.
From a business development perspective, its interesting to note that this fake Jordan brand has been operating in the open for 12 years and according to the article, Nike has been in dispute with the company since 2006. According to the article, its only this week that the real Michael Jordan has brought legal action against the fake brand. The lesson being that for western companies with valuable brands its always advisable to establish beachheads in China as early as practicable and to exercise brand-building and PR via digital, social media, experiential, retail, etc, as a key method of legal defense.
The English summary translation of the article is ours.
News link (Chinese): http://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/gsnews/20120223/092911436815.shtml
Feb 23, 2010, Beijing. The legendary Michael Jordan announced through AP that he’s formally suing Chinese sportswear maker Jordan Sports for abusing his name and his children’s name. “It’s not about money”, said Jordan.
The trademark of Jordan Sports is a silhouette of Michael Jordan in the air getting ready for a slam dunk. The brand has grabbed a big share of rural market with cheap sports shoes, and achieved CNY2.91 billion revenue [NB: USD462M] in 2010, currently seeking IPO on stock exchanges.
According to the IPO document, Jordan Sports claims that “Jordan” is but a common family name for foreigners. It’s not supposed to be specifically “Michael Jordan”. As to the “Air Jordan” brand owned by Nike, the Chinese Jordan claims that the differences between the two of them are pretty obvious. Plus, Jordan Sports registered “Jordan” trademarks in China first, and Nike’s applications for similar trademarks are currently non-exceptionally rejected by the SAIC [NB: Chinese State Administration of Industry and Commerce].
However, in the same document it also said that Jordan Sports has two other trademarks under its belt: “Jie Fu Li Qiao Dan” (Jeffrey Jordan) and “Ma Ku Si Qiao Dan” (Marcus Jordan). [NB: Michael Jordan’s two sons are named Jeffrey and Marcus].
Except for the Jordan brand, Nike and its offspring Converse have been engaged in a long-lasting war against Jordan Sports over Converse’s star-shaped trademark too. The dispute stretched from 2006 until now.
[NB: according to other Chinese news resources, in early 2012 there was a Beijing consumer suing Jordan Sports for business fraud. The angry consumer pleaded that “Jordan” as a transliteration is very well known and commonly associated to Michael Jordan, and Jordan Sports never mentioned in any marketing collateral that the brand has nothing to do with the real Michael Jordan. Allegravita speculates that this may be a part of the Nike/Jordan legal offense.]
