A Shanghai court Wednesday rejected a Beijing resident's request for a compensation payment of 57,800 yuan (US$6,989.1) from Shanghai's Great World Guinness Headquarters, and claimed that the Shanghai company is not a legal agent for the Guinness World Records.

Zhang Di, 42, who aspired to create a Guinness world record, carried out a performance of bungee jumping from a helicopter some 80 metres from the ground on August 29, 2002.

"I called the Shanghai company in early May last year, and one of its staff named Zhu Shisheng said that the company was approved as an agent by the UK-based Guinness World Records," he said at the Huangpu District People's Court.

Yet, on September 17, Zhang got from a report from Beijing Youth Daily that Shanghai Great World Guinness was different from Guinness World Records.

Feeling cheated, Zhang sued the company, and the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House which published promotion books for the company, insisting that the two carried out illegal promotion and publicity activities to make profits.

The Shanghai company said that it did not operate under the umbrella of the Guinness World Records group. The publishing house said that it had no business with the content of these books as a publisher.

The Shanghai company said that it registered in 1992 at the Huangpu District Industrial and Commercial Sub-bureau under the Chinese name Ji Ni Si, which bears the similar pronunciation of translation of the word "Guinness" in the Chinese language, but the two names have different Chinese characters.

"The company was established to promote Guinness activities in China, and it only recognized national records but not world records," said Shao Ming, defending lawyer for the Shanghai company.

Also, Shanghai Great World Guinness said so on the certificate application forms the company sent to Zhang, and that it had clearly stipulated that the record would only be recognized as a national one.

According to the court, Zhang did not provide sufficient evidence to prove what he said, and the Shanghai company had fulfilled its duty to let Zhang know the truth of the Great World Guinness in the application form.

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