{"id":19254,"date":"2012-03-07T16:53:02","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T08:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinahearsay.com\/?p=12307"},"modified":"2012-03-07T16:53:02","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T08:53:02","slug":"shanghai-court-accepts-michael-jordan-case-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2012\/03\/07\/shanghai-court-accepts-michael-jordan-case-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Shanghai Court Accepts Michael Jordan Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you’ve been following this dispute between Michael Jordan and a Chinese company that not only currently uses the popular Chinese version of his name, but has also registered a long list of Jordan-related names and logos as trademarks in China, the case is moving forward. Shanghai’s Second Intermediate Court has announced its acceptance of the case, so we should either see a settlement of some sort or a hearing later on this year. This one still looks like a slam dunk to me, but of course we have not heard from the other side yet.<\/p>\n

Here’s the relevant blurb from The Legal Daily<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u6cd5\u5236\u7f51\u8baf \u8bb0\u8005 \u5218\u5efa \u4e0a\u6d77\u4e8c\u4e2d\u9662\u521a\u521a\u53d1\u5e03\u7684\u5fae\u535a\u79f0\uff0c\u201c\u65e5\u524d\uff0c\u6211\u9662\u53d7\u7406\u4e86\u539f\u544a\u8fc8\u514b\u5c14\u2022\u4e54\u4e39\u8bc9\u88ab\u544a\u4e54\u4e39\u4f53\u80b2\u80a1\u4efd\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8\u3001\u4e0a\u6d77\u767e\u4ede\u8d38\u6613\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8\u59d3\u540d\u6743\u7ea0\u7eb7\u4e00\u6848\u3002\u201d\u8fd9\u662f\u4e2d\u56fd\u6cd5\u9662\u9996\u6b21\u6b63\u5f0f\u5ba3\u5e03\u53d7\u7406\u6b64\u6848\u3002<\/p>\n

\u4eca\u5e742\u670824\u65e5\uff0c\u7bee\u7403\u5de8\u661f\u8fc8\u514b\u5c14\u2022\u4e54\u4e39\u8868\u793a\uff0c\u5df2\u7ecf\u5411\u4e2d\u56fd\u6cd5\u9662\u63d0\u8d77\u8bc9\u8bbc\uff0c\u6307\u63a7\u4e54\u4e39\u4f53\u80b2\u80a1\u4efd\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8\u5728\u672a\u7ecf\u6388\u6743\u7684\u60c5\u51b5\u4e0b\u4f7f\u7528\u5176\u59d3\u540d\u3002\u4e54\u4e39\u968f\u540e\u5728\u58f0\u660e\u4e2d\u5199\u9053\uff0c\u8fd9\u4e2a\u8bc9\u8bbc\u4e0d\u5173\u4e4e\u91d1\u94b1\uff0c\u8fd9\u662f\u5173\u4e8e\u539f\u5219\u7684\u95ee\u9898\u3002\u4e54\u4e39\u4f53\u80b2\u81ea\u4ece2000\u5e74\u4f7f\u7528\u201c\u4e54\u4e39\u201d\u5546\u6807\u4ee5\u6765\u8d28\u7591\u58f0\u4ece\u672a\u505c\u6b62\u8fc7\u3002<\/p>\n

\u4e54\u4e39\u8981\u6c42\u6ee5\u7528\u5176\u59d3\u540d\u7684\u884c\u4e3a\u7acb\u5373\u505c\u6b62\uff0c\u5e76\u8ba9\u4e2d\u56fd\u6d88\u8d39\u8005\u4e86\u89e3\u4ed6\u8ddf\u4e54\u4e39\u4f53\u80b2\u80a1\u4efd\u6709\u9650\u516c\u53f8\u6ca1\u6709\u4efb\u4f55\u5173\u7cfb\u3002<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you don’t read Chinese or can’t be bothered to use Google Translate, don’t worry about the above. Nothing substantive there aside from the announcement.<\/p>\n

Ordinarily, I would stick with writing about a dispute at the outset and then only returning when something important happens, like a judgment – the iPad case has been a big exception. However, with the Jordan case, whether or not a court actually accepted the case was made into an issue last week.<\/p>\n

This became a bit weird, and since I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on, I remained silent. But just for the record, now that the case is definitely moving forward, here’s what happened. First, the Securities Times<\/em> reported last Wednesday that a Beijing court had rejected Jordan’s complaint. This was picked up by a lot of folks<\/a>, although they all just cited the original reporting. I had no idea whether this was true or not, but it certainly seemed more than a bit odd.<\/p>\n

Why? Well, here’s the thing.\u00a0Although I’d never recommend announcing that a case had been accepted unless it was official, I assume that Jordan’s local litigation team knew a long time ago that the case would be accepted. You don’t leave these things to chance, and getting informal confirmation of such things by court officials is not exactly rare. If you take a high-profile case like this to court (actually, any case) you don’t just file a complaint on a lark and hope that things work out for the best. So I doubt Jordan’s folks were just waiting around to see what would happen. At least, I hope not.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the next day, Jordan came out with a press release<\/a>, saying that a court in China had indeed accepted his case. However, there were absolutely no details released with the statement, which I found to be quite dodgy. Again, I had no way to tell what was going on, aside from dueling PR campaigns, so I took the lazy man’s route and didn’t do anything.<\/p>\n

So this case is getting off to a somewhat bizarre start. And don’t get me wrong – I like weird litigation. However, I do wonder why the alleged infringer said that the case had been rejected. Why do that if it wasn’t true? What do they gain? And if they believed it to be true, why say so without verifying it?<\/p>\n

On the Jordan side, what’s with all the cloak and dagger stuff? I’ve never seen a press release mention a dispute with a reference to a “China court.” Might as well just say that they filed a case on the planet earth. I can understand being reticent prior to the case being accepted, but afterwards? Once that happens, why wait to tell everyone about it?<\/p>\n

These are the kinds of things that keep me awake at night.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a9 Stan for China Hearsay<\/a>, 2012. |\nPermalink<\/a> |\n2 comments<\/a> |\nAdd to\ndel.icio.us<\/a>\n\nPost tags: Michael Jordan<\/a>, naming rights<\/a>, Qiao Dan<\/a>, reputation rights<\/a>, trademark infringement<\/a>\n<\/small><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, so much for last week's drama. The Jordan reputation rights case will indeed go forward as expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225,194,385],"tags":[3580,3614,3582,3583,1707],"class_list":["post-19254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-news-chinese-law","category-trademark-infringement","tag-michael-jordan","tag-naming-rights","tag-qiao-dan","tag-reputation-rights","tag-trademark-infringement-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}