Intellectual Property » The Unstoppable (Mostly) Michael Jordan IP Machine

The Unstoppable (Mostly) Michael Jordan IP Machine

August 19, 2015

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“He’s a living example of an excellently marketed sports personality, whose retirement has done little to curb the global enforcement of his IP rights and the success of his brand,” says a post from Primary Opinion. But his IP enterprise has also had its ups and downs, and there is a lot to learn from it, the writer says. Jordan recently lost a bout in China, failing to shut down a mark consisting of a transliteration of his name (rendered in English as ‘Qiaodan’) and a logo resembling the Jumpman on Nike Air Jordan products. A couple of IP experts draw highly divergent conclusion from that episode. Meanwhile, in the U.S., brand Jordan won in a dispute with a photographer who claimed a resemblance between the Jumpman logo and a picture of Jordan that he took for Life magazine in 1984. Jordan also won a case against Chicago grocery store chain Jewel-Osco, which had run an ad in Sports Illustrated, congratulating him on his Hall of Fame induction. Commenting on what some might consider a borderline case, one attorney said it was a reminder that in an age when it’s ridiculously easy to cut and paste an image on to a company’s social media page, it’s important to remember that doing so with a famous persona runs the risk of legal action.

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