A poster for Wolf Warriors featuring Wu Jing Photo: CFP

Wu Jing, who acted in and directed Chinese action movie Wolf Warrior, has won a lawsuit against a company called Wolf Warriors after accusing the company of infringing on his rights. The company was ordered to apologize to Wu and pay compensation of 340,000 yuan ($52,400).

The Beijing No.4 Intermediate People’s Court rejected the company’s appeal and upheld the original verdict, The Paper reported.

As well as paying the compensation, the company has to immediately stop producing, selling and using the products and promotional materials containing Wu's image and name.

Wu found in June 2020 that the company was using pictures of him on its betel nut products with promotional slogans like “Wu Jing supports Wolf Warriors” without asking for his permission.

Wu sued the company for compensation of 1.12 million yuan, and asked it to remove the products containing his name and image.

The company argued that the photo they used was from the film Kill Zone and said they had signed an agreement with the company that had copyright for the film.

But the court decided that this didn’t mean there was no need to get permission from Wu.

The lawsuit drew interest among Chinese netizens and a related hashtag has been viewed more than 200 million times as of Monday on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

Netizens supported Wu’s actions in defending his rights and urged the company to stop its illegal behavior and take it as a lesson.

As an actor who has starred in several popular movies such as Wolf Warrior 1 and 2, as well as The Wandering Earth, Wu is well-known around China. It’s not the first time he has been involved in disputes with enterprises over rights infringement.

In another case, Wu sued a Beijing drinks company that also called itself Wolf Warriors and got compensation of 613,000 yuan.