On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs can become the first team in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls. But if they do, the NFL will have to pay a company owned by an NBA legend for its use of “three-peat” or variations such as “threepeat,” “three peat” and “3 peat.”
According to a database maintained by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Miami Heat team president Pat Riley owns the trademark on all of those terms, taking action on the concept after leading the Los Angeles Lakers to NBA titles in 1987 and 1988. (It’s believed that either Byron Scott or Wes Matthews, players for the Lakers, actually came up with the saying.)
On Tuesday, Cllct’s Darren Rovell reported the NFL had reached an agreement with Riles & Company Inc., which owns the trademarks, to use “three-peat” on Chiefs merchandise if Kansas City defeats the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX.
A number of teams that won three consecutive championships in other sports opted to pay Riles & Company for use of the term. The Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls did so twice, from 1991 to 1993 and again from 1996 to 1998. According to a 2005 ESPN story, their first use of “three-peat” on championship merchandise led to a $300,000 windfall for Riley, who told the network he donates the proceeds to charity via the Pat Riley Family Foundation.
Trademark royalty rates – the amount of money someone would have to pay Riley’s company to use the term – generally are set as a percentage of revenue. In 2005, according to ESPN, a USC fan began selling T-shirts with “Three-Pete” on them in honor of Trojans football coach Pete Carroll, who was vying for his third straight national title. But the USPTO already had ruled “Three-Pete” too closely resembled the “three-peat” trademark held by Riley’s company, so the fan would have to fork over 5 percent of his sales for use of the term. The fan stopped making the shirts after the company that made them received a warning from attorneys for Riley’s company.
“It’s like going out there and picking up a penny on the ground,” Riley told ESPN in 2005. “I don’t pay any attention to it. If somebody wants to license that phrase, we’ll license it to them. But I don’t go out and pursue it. We don’t sell it; we don’t browbeat anybody. If they want it, they go to somebody and they’ll pay us a royalty on it.”