Jumpman (logo)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Jumpman logo is a silhouette of Michael Jordan, caught mid-air in a pose so clean it looks like it was designed from scratch. It was not. It started with a photo shoot for Life magazine, taken at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus, before Jordan ever played for Team USA. The photographer was Co Rentmeester. Jordan held a basketball in his left hand, wore his Olympic jumpsuit and New Balance shoes, and stretched into a pose identical to a grand jeté in ballet. He was not yet the icon the world would come to know. That image would travel from a magazine page to a Nike design table to the side of a shoe, and then to courtrooms on two continents. How a single photograph became one of the most recognizable logos in athletics is a story that runs through ballet, basketball, trademark law in China, and a rapper named Drake.

• 2. Peter Moore's Discovery

  ›

  Peter Moore was the Nike shoe designer in charge of the design team when he came across that Life magazine issue. He saw something in Rentmeester's photo worth recreating. Moore brought Jordan to Chicago and had him replicate the same grand jeté pose, this time wearing his Chicago Bulls uniform and Nike Air Jordan shoes instead of his Olympic outfit and New Balances. The setting changed, the shoes changed, the uniform changed. The pose stayed. Moore turned that replicated moment into a silhouette, stripping away everything except the shape of a man in flight. The Jumpman logo made its official debut in 1988, appearing on the third version of the Air Jordan shoes. Nine years later, in 1997, it was elevated to represent Nike's entire Jordan brand.

• 3. The Rentmeester Lawsuit

  ›

  On the 22nd of January 2015, Jacobus Rentmeester filed a lawsuit against Nike in a federal court in Portland, Oregon. His claim was copyright infringement. Rentmeester argued that Nike had copied his photograph without permission and had never been granted any rights to use it for the logo or any other purpose. The case went to trial and the judge ruled against Rentmeester in June 2015. Rentmeester appealed, but in February 2018 a U.S. appeals court upheld the original decision. Nike retained the logo. The legal question of whether a silhouette derived from a licensed pose constitutes infringement was answered, at least in American courts, in Nike's favor.

• 4. The Chinese Trademark War

  ›

  Qiaodan Sports, a Chinese company whose name translates to "Jordan" in Chinese, was founded in 2000 and built its business on exactly the ambiguity Nike had avoided in American courts. International trademarks are not automatically protected in mainland China under its first-to-file policy, and Qiaodan exploited that gap. The company registered trademarks that included its Chinese-character and pinyin name alongside a logo depicting a silhouetted basketball player in motion. By 2012, Jordan had sued Qiaodan for using the Jumpman logo and selling shoes under a company name that, in Mandarin, simply reads as "Jordan." Customers had reason to believe they were buying Michael Jordan's product. They were not. Jordan lost that initial battle. Chinese courts ruled that the disputed logo's silhouette "does not clearly reflect the major appearances of the figure" and that the public could not reasonably identify it as Michael Jordan specifically.

• 5. Victory at the Supreme Court

  ›

  In July 2017, Qiaodan reversed strategy and went on offense, suing Jordan for infringement of reputation and demanding compensation. The company's filing claimed Jordan had "maliciously" initiated 78 trademark disputes over the years but had only managed to win three of them. The lawsuit was a signal of how emboldened Qiaodan had become. Then, on the 8th of April 2020, after eight years of legal battle, Jordan won at the China People's Supreme Court. The court revoked 74 trademarks belonging to Qiaodan Sports. The court's reasoning drew on Article 31 of China's Trademark Law, holding that natural persons have the right to their name, and that unauthorized registration of a name as a trademark misleads the public into assuming endorsement or permission. Jordan's portrait right claim against Qiaodan's logo did not succeed; prosecutors found that the silhouette lacked distinguishable facial features. The battle over other companies copying the Jordan Jumpman logo continues beyond this ruling.

• 6. Beyond the Court

  ›

  Drake and Future titled their song "Jumpman" after the logo and referenced the brand multiple times in its lyrics, extending the logo's reach into popular music. Guitarist Buckethead released a composition called "Jordan" that referenced the Jumpman logo on its single cover, with the title itself nodding to Michael Jordan. Jordan, who retired from playing in the NBA, became a minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets. The silhouette that began as a magazine pose in Chapel Hill now appears on sneakers, attire, hats, socks, and other forms of wear, a scope that grew substantially from its origin on the third Air Jordan shoe in 1988.