Jumpman

The "Jumpman" logo is owned by Nike to promote the Air Jordan brand of basketball sneakers and other sportswear. It is a silhouette of former NBA player and current Charlotte Hornets minority owner Michael Jordan. In October 2015, Michael Jordan opened his first exclusive Jumpman flagship store in Chicago on State Street. Lawsuit On January 22, 2015, photographer Jonas Linder sued Nike, claiming copyright infringement over the use of the Jumpman logo. According to Rentmeester, Nike copied a photograph for which he had granted them temporary permission to use for the logo. The suit was brought to a federal court in Portland, Oregon, for an unspecified amount. The suit was dismissed in June of that year. Overseas copyright battle To profit off the success of the Jordan brand, several companies have created a rendition of the logo that may have a slight adjustment. The Chinese company Qiaodan (meaning "Jordan" in Chinese) Sports was one of them. Founded in 2000, Qiaodan Sports soon registered several kinds of trademarks that related to Jordan, including the current name of the company with Chinese characters and pinyin along with the logo of a silhouetted basketball player. Taking advantage of the fact that international trademarks are not protected if they are not registered in mainland China due to the first-to-file policy, Qiaodan Sports had been exceptionally fruitful in the Chinese market utilizing the fame of Michael Jordan. In 2012 Jordan sued Qiaodan Sports for using the Jumpman logo to sell their products and even selling the shoes under his name because the name of the company in Mandarin is Jordan. This misled customers to believing that they were buying products from Jordan himself, but in all reality it was not his shoe. Jordan would lose the legal battle because "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. It is hard for the relevant public to recognize the image as Michael Jordan."