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ARTICLE · 19 DECEMBER 2016

Michael Jordan's Great Win In China—Or Is It?

Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP
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On December 8, 2016, Beijing time, the China Supreme People's Court issued a public decision granting Michael Jordan a win in his four-year battle over the right to own his name in Chinese characters.

GlobalIntellectual Property
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP
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On December 8, 2016, Beijing time, the China Supreme People's Court issued a public decision granting Michael Jordan a win in his four-year battle over the right to own his name in Chinese characters.  But the win was not a complete one. In that same decision, Supreme Court concluded that Michael Jordan does not own the phonetics of the name JORDAN in Chinese characters.

What exactly does this mean?

The dispute started more than a decade ago between "Qiaodan Sports" (a Chinese sportswear company headquartered in the southeastern part of China) and Michael Jordan (the six-time NBA champion from the United States). Qiao-Dan is the English phonetic (the so called "transliteration") of JORDAN in Chinese characters. If you say "Qiao-Dan" to a Chinese native speaker, he or she recognizes that as referring to JORDAN in English.

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