Forty-five years ago today, the name of Cincinnati, Ohio’s professional football team was first registered as a United States trademark. On August 8, 1972, the creatively-named Cincinnati Bengals, Inc. was granted U.S. Registration No. 940763 for the mark BENGALS for “entertainment services in the form of professional football game competition.” The Bengals were formed as a member of the American Football League in 1966 by Paul Brown, the team’s first head coach and namesake of its current stadium in downtown Cincinnati. Brown took the name from an earlier but unrelated “Cincinnati Bengals” football team that played from 1937-1941. The Bengals became part of the National Football League after the AFL’s 1969 merger with the NFL. Today, the BENGALS name is still in use, the 940763 registration is still in force, and the team still hopes to one day win a Super Bowl.

By JonRidinger (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.