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In Michael Jeffery Jordan v Chinese Trademark Review and Adjudication Board, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) set a precedent for foreign companies and celebrities enforcing their rights of publicity against malicious trademark registration in China. This article introduces the legal grounds of the SPC's deliberations on Jordan's claims and responds to the critiques of most Chinese commentators in the field of civil law. Deeply influenced by German law, mainland China's legal system strictly distinguishes between personality rights and property rights. Comparative analysis with the US, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong indicates that different legal civilizations have developed different approaches to position the right of publicity logically in their legal systems. The Jordan decision indicates that the 'right of the name' is a prior right provided in Article 32 of the Trademark Law of the PRC. This article contends that the 'right of the name' as provided in the Chinese Anti-Unfair Competition Law differs from the 'right of the name' articulated in Article 110 of the General Principles of Civil Law (2017). The former concerns the commercial interest and property aspects of a celebrity's name, which is fairly similar to the right of publicity, while the latter regards the personality right. The further development of the right of publicity protection relies in mainland China on a consistent judicial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By conducting field research and analysing judgments delivered in Beijing courts from 2004 to 2011, we find that the popular notion held by China's trade partners of the inadequacy of intellectual property protection is only partly supported by the empirical evidence. The likelihood of winning lawsuits is higher for foreign than domestic plaintiffs and the extremely low damages ruled by Chinese courts are due to particular causes. Courts lack consistent methods to calculate incurred losses in intellectual property right (IPR) infringements and consequently routinely apply the statutory damages whose upper limit is restricted by legislation. Efforts by Chinese legislators to enhance compensation by lifting the upper limit of awardable statutory damages in the Third Amendment of Chinese Patent Law (2008) did not seem to have an effect on our sample. Chinese policymakers should instead focus on the cause of the issue by providing more implementable guidelines for courts to calculate losses. Courts need to develop applicable conventions for calculating damages, based on objective criteria of how much compensation ought to be payable, which is also the basis of calculating reasonable statutory damages. Thus, the new provision of the "right of information" on pirated goods proposed by the ongoing Fourth Amendment provides a significant weapon to combat counterfeiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]