Nike loses copyright court battle

A Beijing court yesterday ruled against Nike in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by animation artist Zhu Zhiqiang, but only ordered the sportswear giant to pay Zhu 300,000 yuan instead of the 2 million yuan he was seeking.

Beijing No1 Intermediate People's Court also ruled that Nike must publish a public apology on the internet and stop using the stick-figure advertisements which it believed were copied from a character created by Zhu in 2000.

According to Xinhua, the court agreed with the artist's accusation that Nike had violated his legally protected exclusive copyright to the image by reproducing it and then using it in the public domain.

In its ruling, the court said it was convinced that the character created by Zhu and the stick-figure cartoon used by Nike were too similar in design and concluded that the artist's right had been infringed.

Zhu, who publishes his works under the name Xiaoxiao, said he created the stick-figure character four years ago and used it in a flash animation series. He then registered eight animations featuring the character for copyright protection in his home city of Changchun .

Earlier reports said Nike had rejected Zhu's claim, saying a European designer created the figure and the firm owned its copyright.