Thursday, August 28, 2003

No. 47 said to No. 3 . . .

The Trademark Blog has this interesting post on numbers as marks, which says, among other things:

"My unscientific speculation is that Chanel's trademark, No. 5, is the most famous number trademark. Pizzeria Uno's trademark lawyer has contacted me to suggest that UNO is the most famous number trademark. Levi's owns 501 and 505 (it shares 505 with a cleaning solution). And let's not forget 007."

Also, on numerology, earlier this week, I heard of the complicated deal between two Miami Dolphins players over the return of No. 27 to Terrell Buckley, who made a pact that he would pay his teammate for the right to wear his old number.

The Miami Herald has this account of the jersey deal:

"The base-salary portion of the contract, worth in excess of $7,000, stipulates that after Miami's preseason game against Atlanta last week, Freeman would relinquish his number.

''If the game ended at 11 p.m., at 11:01 he could no longer touch No. 27,'' Buckley said.

The contract even has incentive clauses. If Buckley goes to the Pro Bowl, if he gets a certain number of interceptions, if he scores a certain number of touchdowns off those interceptions, he must pay Freeman more money for the number.

''We negotiated this thing for two weeks,'' Buckley said. ``I'm serious. I was just going to drop the issue altogether, but my family kept hounding me to get back my old number. This is what it took.''

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