A Chinese fast-food chain used a Bruce Lee figure as its logo for 15 years, and his daughter sued for 210 million yuan

Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong on 20 July 1973, aged 32, of brain swelling. He is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle. His unfinished film Game of Death was completed by Robert Clouse with a look-alike and released in 1978; about 15 minutes of the final film show Lee himself. In 2004 a Dongguan dessert shop renamed itself Zhen Gongfu, "Real Kungfu", and began using a logo of a man in Lee's classic pose. By 2014 it ran 570 restaurants in 40 Chinese cities. On 25 December 2019 Bruce Lee Enterprises, whose legal representative is his daughter Shannon Lee, sued the chain in the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court. It sought 210 million yuan, an end to the use of his image, and 90 days of public notices that the chain had no link to him. The chain said it was "baffled". The case was heard on 25 August 2022. On the same day China's National Intellectual Property Administration declared 20 of the chain's trademarks invalid as deceptive. The Beijing courts upheld the invalidation and listed it among their model trademark cases of 2024. In April 2025 the chain was still using the image. No judgment in the Shanghai suit has been reported^†.