Nike Wins IPR Lawsuit Vs. Chinese Manufacturers

This is great news. The problem of course will be in enforcement of the judgment, but the win sends a message.

U.S. sportswear giant Nike has won lawsuits against two Chinese shoemakers and a Shanghai-based French supermarket over copyright infringement of its Air Jordan logos.

The Shanghai No.2 Intermediate Court ordered the supermarket and the shoemakers to pay damages totaling 350,000 yuan (about 46,000 U.S. dollars).

The court heard that Nike employees succeeded in buying four pairs of sports shoes bearing logos identical to its copyrighted Air Jordan Logo of former NBA star Michael Jordan slam-dunking a basketball in three outlets of Auchan in Shanghai.

The shoes were manufactured by Jinjiang Longzhibu Shoes Company and Jinjiang Kangwei Shoes Company in east China's Fujian Province.

The reference to the French supermarket would be Carrefour, an enormous (referring to store size) chain competing with Wal-Mart in China. I hope Nike takes them to task separately in the US or France. Curiously, the Chinese have as much distain for the French as the rest of the world - excluding, possibly, Belgium -, and they arrived at their opinions independently.