Michael Jordan trademark decision becomes publicly available

China’s highest court has published a decision by a lower court to reject Michael Jordan’s trademark claim against sports retailer Qiaodan Sports.

The Supreme People’s Court posted the ruling on its website on Monday, July 27. The ruling had been made by the Beijing High Court in May.

The dispute concerns Qiaodan’s registration of a trademark for the name of its company, which Jordan had argued was a breach of his own Chinese trademark for ‘Jordan’ in the Latin alphabet.

‘Qiaodan’ is the pinyin translation of ‘Jordan’ in Chinese (乔丹). Pinyin is the system for transcribing Mandarin Chinese characters into the Latin script.

The former basketball star obtained a trademark for the word ‘Jordan’ in 1993 in China but Qiaodan Sports registered the terms ‘Qiaodan’, ‘Qiao Dan’ and the Chinese character translation of ‘Jordan’ in 1998.

Qiaodan Sports also registered the number ‘23’, Jordan’s former playing number, as trademark in the same year.

The number 23 jersey was made famous by Jordan during his time playing for the US National Basketball Association team the Chicago Bulls.

While Qiaodan has been selling sports equipment under its name and with the number ‘23’ logo since 2000, it was shortly after the company was about to go public in 2011 that Jordan filed the lawsuit.

In February 2012, Jordan filed a trademark infringement claim at Shanghai No. 2 People’s Intermediate Court, alleging the use of his name and the number ‘23’ without his permission was an infringement.

But the Shanghai court ruled against him.

Jordan appealed against the decision, but his appeal was thrown out by the Beijing court earlier this year.

Gordon Gao, counsel for Jordan, declined to comment. Qiaodan Sports could be reached for comment.

(CORRECTION, 16.00: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the Supreme People’s Court refused to hear this case.)