Vegas owner not concerned over Army's interest in Golden Knights name

Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley isn’t worried that his team’s recently announced name has “caught the attention” of the U.S. Army’s Golden Knights parachute team.

On Monday, the Fayetteville Observer quoted a spokeswoman for the Army Marketing and Research Group saying that the military was “reviewing the situation and figuring out what the way ahead would be.”

The Golden Knights are based in Fort Bragg and have used this name since the 1960s.

“I knew we were done and I wasn’t really concerned about it and they said they were going to take a look at it,” Foley said in a phone interview with Puck Daddy. “Well, what they’re going to find out is you can have a similar name and have it coexist with another entity that uses the same name in different industries where there’s no confusion likely, that’s really what the trademark laws are all about.”

Foley said his team name “was fully cleared by outside trademark counsel for use in connection with an NHL team.”

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Added Foley, “Since no one is likely to be confused between an NHL hockey team and a military parachute team, the two uses of Golden Knights are able to coexist under trademark law, and that’s the research we did.”

Foley noted that the Texas Department of Public Safety is called the Texas Rangers – the same name as the Dallas/Fort Worth area Major League Baseball franchise. Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York also goes by Golden Knights.

“If only one entity could use a name, we’d have a big problem with names in the country,” Foley said.

Vegas announced their team name and logo in a big ceremony next to T-Mobile Arena on Nov. 22. The decision to go with Golden Knights ended a long process that involved many twists and turns. These included possibilities from variations involving the word ‘Hawk’ to the ‘Knights’ template.

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Foley believes that the Army may have been too quick to comment on the Vegas Golden Knights before taking a closer look.

“They’re going to go through their vetting process and they’re going to realize what the deal is,” Foley said. “They probably shouldn’t have … they probably should have waited to say anything until they did some vetting.“

Foley has been pleased with sales of Vegas Golden Knights apparel since the team announced the name. As of Monday morning he said the Golden Knights had sold $125,000 worth of merchandise. Foley said the NHL Fanatics store had sold $250,000 worth of merchandise as of the last update he received. The team has yet to release an official jersey and apparel is mostly limited to shirts and hats at the moment.

“There’s a lot of demand for our logo and my belief is we’re going to go crazy when we finally have our jerseys,” Foley said.

The billionaire businessman added that the Golden Knights will have team stores in every terminal of the local airport, which he believes will be important towards drumming up interest for tourists arriving in Las Vegas. The team officially will start NHL play in 2017-18.

“I know that everyone who comes to Las Vegas, the 43 million visitors per-year, I think a lot of them are going to buy a jersey,” Foley said. “You give me your guess but 43 million people coming through of that and 25 million are coming through the airport – can I sell 100,000 jerseys?”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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