6 Common Ideas You Had No Idea Celebrities Actually Owned

6

Donald Trump Owns Central Park's Name -- And He Doesn't Know How To Profit From It

Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a ridiculous idiot. His wealth-to-business-acumen ratio puts him in the same category as Powerball winners and people who get run over by the crown prince of Dubai. He even had to file bankruptcy on a casino, despite the fact that losing money running a casino is almost statistically impossible to do. But all that said, he did once make a rather safe and foolproof investment. He simply hasn't figured out what to do with it yet.

Donald Trump owns "Central Park" -- that is, the actual name of New York City's famous green rectangle. In 1991, Trump personally was able to file for the trademark without any fuss at all, and New York City and the Central Park Conservancy let it happen without a peep. Maybe they didn't notice, or maybe they didn't think a sentient bucket of thick swill would ever be clever enough to make any money from it anyway.

They would have been mostly right, too. From what he's done with the name so far, you'd think the U.S. president has never set foot in a park, not even the one he used to live right across from. He's been focusing his licensing rights on picking up scraps from things like keychain sales and tacky glassware, and he's considered making Central Park gun racks. It leaves us to wonder who on Earth associates guns, cars, and hot sand with a park. But his most expansive Central Park project has to be the dumbest of all: an unsuccessful furniture line named Trump Home Central Park. Because nothing says "luxury furniture" quite like a name associated with homeless people sleeping on pigeon-poop-covered benches.

ncfurnitureoverstock.com "Trump Home Central Park: When we say our beds are urine-proofed, you better believe it."

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.

5

Bill Gates Owns The Rights To Hundreds Of Dead Celebrities

Bill Gates is the world's richest man. He can buy pretty much anything he wants, and he's blown a little bit of discretionary income here and there and allotted the overwhelming majority of it to charity. He's almost the exact opposite of what people expect from the disgustingly rich. But there is one eccentric billionaire-esque investment he's made: owning the images of Albert Einstein and a whole host of other dead people.

via Wiki Commons "This image OK" -- Cracked Legal

4

Basketball Coach Pat Riley Trademarked The Phrase "Three-Peat" (And "3Peat," And "ThreePeat")

The '80s and '90s were an exciting time for basketball fans. With players like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, teams were constantly playing hard and fast, shredding records all over the place. And during all this excitement, one legendary coach looked at his many achievements and thought: "How can I make even more money from all this?"

3

Mark Cuban Basically Owns The Concept Of Civic Pride

Mark Cuban is a guy whose face you probably know from that show about the millionaires judging business proposals or those Facebook videos your crazy libertarian uncle keeps posting. Cuban is known for his savvy business acumen, and perhaps his greatest stroke of capitalist genius was betting on how boring and unoriginal sports fans can be.

Cuban owns the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, but by far his most profitable sports asset has to be his trademark of the phrase "City of Champions." Unsurprisingly, just about every place in America (outside of Muncie, Indiana) likes to think they're the "city of champions." So whenever a city wants to take pride in itself, such as when it wins at sports, it has to pay Cuban for the privilege.

In fact, calling yourself this utterly generic phrase becomes almost mandatory when a city wins several sporting championships in the same year. Boston's sports teams have been on a winning streak for a decade now, so you might as well consider the city's treasury to be Cuban's own retirement fund. And in 2009, when the Pittsburgh Steelers and Penguins won the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup a few months apart, Cuban could not have been happier. Not only is he from Pittsburgh, but he also got to add another foot of gold coins to his Scrooge McDuck swimming vault.

2

A Bunch Of Celebrities Are Copyrighting Phrases They Used Once

Celebrities are by definition creators, even if all they create is people being interested in the curve of their butts. It's totally normal for a celebrity to want to take control of their own identity. So if JAY-Z or Beyonce want to trademark their kids' names so no one can take advantage of their toddler fame, who could blame them. But there are a bunch of celebrities who think that because they uttered a phrase once, they get to copyright the English language four words at a time.

Precisely one song in the Taylor Swift repertoire uses the phrase "this sick beat." It is sung exactly once, yet she felt the need to slap a trademark on it regardless. Ditto with "Nice to meet you, where you been?" and "could show you incredible things" (each used one time in one song). It's only a matter of time before Swift releases an album of her reciting a English tourist phrasebook for business purposes (yet she'll somehow still manage to reference all the times she stared into the beautiful, yet deceiving eyes of John Mayer).

But at least we can hold our heads high knowing we lost a quarter of the dictionary to none other than queen bee Taylor Swift. Meanwhile, even Z-listers are trying to trademark what they think are their original catchphrases. Like Rachel Zoe, a celebrity stylist who thinks she deserves to own "bananas" and "I die." We wonder how many cease and desist letters she's going to be sending to Chiquita and high schools putting on performances of Shakespeare.

1

Gene Simmons Owns The Bag With The Dollar Sign On It

Have you ever robbed a bank, only to be wildly disappointed by the lack of bags with dollar signs on them? If you want that changed, you'll have to have a word with Gene Simmons, who moved on from his primary career as a glam metal party clown to put the C in "corporate sellout."

Simmons, the voluptuously tongued front-ghost of KISS, decided one day that he was so rich and famous that he should have dibs on the dollar sign. But he swiftly found out he'd have a rough time getting to use the dollar sign in just any old way -- there are surprisingly strict restrictions on how it can be used. Even so, Simmons was determined to find a way to use that goshdarn $, like some weird Terminator sent back in time solely to bankrupt Ke$ha. So now he owns the closest thing to a dollar sign through trademarking moneybags. Specifically, a single clip art drawing of a bag with a dollar sign on it.

US Patent Office JACKPOT.