Guest post by OUYANG Yini, JD and JM candidate at PKU STL.
On December 30, 2020, Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court announced its judgment on Michael Jeffrey Jordan v. Qiaodan Sports Co., Ltd., including four parts: (1) the defendant shall make public apology to the plaintiff in the newspapers and on the Internet, clarifying there is no relationship between Qiaodan Sports and Michael Jordan; (2) the defendant shall stop using “Qiaodan” as its trade name; (3) the defendant shall stop using trademarks involving “Qiaodan,” and for those that have become incontestable, the defendant shall use reasonable methods to remind the public of the irrelevancy between the two parties; (4) the defendant shall compensate the plaintiff for mental damages and reasonable costs, respectively 300,000 and 50,000 yuan.
If nothing else, this is going to be the end with regard to the series of “Qiaodan” trademark disputes which have lasted for more than 9 years. Although this is just the first trial decision and Qiaodan Sports theoretically could appeal the ruling, it has little chance to change the ultimate outcome according to the judgment made by the Supreme People’s Court in Michael Jeffrey Jordan v. Trademark Review and Adjudication Board. In fact, Qiaodan Sports clearly understands that it is the losing party, therefore it chose to quickly comply with the judgment and changed its company name to Zhongqiao Sports on January 12, 2021.
“Zhongqiao” implies that it is an abbreviation of “Zhongguo Qiaodan,” meaning Chinese Jordan, and many consumers are annoyed at such slippery behavior. Directly speaking, it is just the most economic way for the company to act in compliance with the court’s order. If the company adopts a brand new name that has nothing to do with the former one, it needs to make huge investments in advertisement and promotion to rebuild its goodwill and reputation. Adopting “Zhongqiao” as the new name, at least the company could reduce some costs even though a part of consumers might look down on its attempt to associate with “Qiaodan.”
“成也萧何，败也萧何,” one famous sentence in China, meaning either success or failure boils down to the same person, appropriately describes the sports company’s developing history. Qiaodan Sports made its achievements partly relying on Michael Jordan’s fame in China, but ultimately lost a large portion of its goodwill due to the series of trademark lawsuits brought by Michael Jordan. It does not work anymore to run a business by capitalizing on other’s reputation, and the correct way is to create and maintain an entity’s own trademark.
OUYANG Yini