6 Common Ideas You Had No Idea Celebrities Actually Owned

And that's about it. Trump seems to be waiting on other people to make Central Park merchandising so he can leech off them like some swamp-dwelling bloodsucker. So for now, he's sitting on his only good idea the way people aren't sitting on his terrible furniture, now available at discount prices up to 90 percent. Great business, you businessman, you.

Roger Richmond is a Hollywood agent, but instead of representing living movie stars, he runs a talent agency for the dead ones. It's something only he and whoever reps Larry King have in common. Richmond's entire job is waiting for families of deceased stars to contact him so that he can be their agent, which has led him to work for half the people who were around in the Golden Age of Hollywood, as well as such famous now-rotted faces like Sigmund Freud and the Wright Brothers. So if some Mad Men-style marketing genius wants to use a still of Steve McQueen fighting Freud balancing on the wings on the first-ever biplane in an ad campaign, they've gotta go through Richmond.

And Richmond, in turn, has to go through Bill Gates. See, Gates' company Corbis bought out Richmond's agency back in 2005, gaining final say on all marketing opportunities. Corbis itself is Gates' image bank division, and owns copyrights to dozens of iconic celebrity pictures. That means that Gates now not only decides who gets to buy these images, but then also what they are allowed to use them for. And ever since the acquisition, they've been remarkably guarded about the use of Einstein's image. Anything that utilizes the "Einstein brand" has to ensure that Gates approves and gets a cut. And if owning the company that owns Einstein's image isn't the sweetest revenge for Steve Jobs using him in those "Think Different" ads for so long, we don't know what is.

In 1989, when Pat Riley was coaching the LA Lakers, he had Magic and Kareem on his roster, which must have felt like playing with god mode enabled. Understandably, he had a good feeling that they might be able to win three NBA titles in a row. Combining his apparent loves of winning and portmanteaus, Riley filed to be the owner of the word "three-peat," and eventually just about every variation on it he could come up with.

Alas, the Lakers didn't make it that far, but Riley still pulled off a coup with that trademark. As hard as it was for literally anybody to beat Michael Jordan in the '90s, Riley was possibly the biggest winner of all. The '90s were full of threepeats three-in-a-row championship streaks. Jordan's Bulls did it twice, and the New York Yankees did it as well. Then the Lakers pulled off their own threepeat streak. So any time the NBA and merchandising companies saw another chance to hock a T-shirt, or a hat, or a bumper sticker with that phrase on it, 5 percent of that goober money went straight into Riley's wallet. He even coined the term "four-ward," because he wouldn't want to see sporting history being made without getting to siphon off as much cash as he could, like some kind of money-tick.

Of course, Riley insists that all of the patents' profits go straight to charity. Strangely, when people ask him which charities, he refuses to answer. He also starts to sweat profusely, screams out "Is that Jordan doing a reverse dunk behind you?" and runs to his golden limousine.

It's gotten so bad that celebs are getting into legal battles with each other about the random words they think they should own. When Drake popularized the term YOLO, a crime against humanity even our grandchildren will still feel the effects of, he had to go to war over the right to be the guy who owns YOLO. Turns out he's nowhere near the first person to try to get in on it, as YOLO had already previously been used by other Canadian rappers and slapped on everything from yogurt to adventure travel packages. Even some random online furniture retailer tried to diversify his portfolio with this completely made-up word.

Oh well, people have to make money somehow. YOLO.

By putting a floppy-looking bag around the dollar sign, he'd made a totally new thing nobody owned, and so Simmons put together a paper trail and became the owner of this random symbol out of an old-timey cartoon. He's got the rights to use it on "apparel, specifically jackets and T-shirts," and anyone who doesn't pay royalties on that could be in serious trouble. There must be dozens of biker gangs and up-and-coming supervillains who have been thwarted by Gene Simmons' experiences with patent attorneys.

When confronted by his very non-rock'n'roll greed, Simmons is absolutely unrepentant. "People said, 'You can't do that.'.... I can do anything I want to do," claims the rock star. "Anyone who thinks that's silly -- the silliest thing I've ever done is wear more makeup and higher heels than your mommy."

But his Mr. Monopoly-like streak of owning words and symbols isn't ending any time soon. Recently, Simmons tried to become the guy who owns the "Rock on!" horns hand sign. He eventually backed off after receiving a heaping pile of criticism from rockers everywhere. He also claims that he owns the trademark to the term "motion picture," which surely must be why no one has dared to make a movie about his life without his say so. Yup, that has to be the reason.

Isaac is on Twitter, and will happily sell jokes to you.

You too can own Einstein ... or at least this Einstein plushie!

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