Nike did not plagiarize a Chinese designer's "matchman" character in an advertisement, the Beijing High People's Court ruled on Thursday.

The final judgement on Zhu Zhiqiang's claim overturned a decision made by the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court in December 2004.

"Nike is delighted by the favourable final verdict. This was never a commercial issue for us. It was a matter of principle," said Zhu Jinqian, director of communications for Nike China.

Zhu Zhiqiang, 30, yesterday refused to comment on the final verdict. He will now have to pay court fees of more than 40,000 yuan (US$5,000).

According to the original judgement in 2004, the "stickman" in Nike's advert in China violated the copyright of work created by Zhu.

The international sportswear company was initially ordered to pay 300,000 yuan (US$37,000) to Zhu and apologize publicly.

In 2000 and 2001, Zhu Zhiqiang completed five flash works containing the "matchman" character. He registered copyrights for the work at the Jilin Provincial Copyright Bureau in Northeast China in 2001.

In 2003, Nike published an advertisement containing a character, which Zhu claimed plagiarized his own "matchman."

The heads of the two figures were both black balls without faces, while the bodies, arms, legs and feet of both characters consisted of black lines.

"But the head and body of the 'stickman' in Nike's advertisement are separate," Liu Hui, presiding judge of the case at the Beijing High People's Court, said yesterday.

He added there were differences in the way the arms and legs stretched, as well as in the strokes used to actually draw the figures.

As the similarities between the two designs a ball as the head and lines as the other parts of a man have appeared in other public forms such as in transport signs, before Zhu created the character, the court decided that it was not protected by law.

"The different sectors were created by Zhu Zhiqiang and Nike separately," the final judgement said.

(China Daily 06/16/2006 page5)