By Dakota Antelman — [email protected]
Select Board candidate Joe Laurin said he made a “stupid and careless” decision when he tried to get NBA legend Pat Riley to go after The Concord Bridge for using the phrase “three-peat” on the sports page.
Laurin attempted to email Riley on February 15, a day after The Bridge used “three-peat” in the headline of a story about the MIAA-champion Concord-Carlisle High School girls swimming and diving team.
Riley, president of the Miami Heat, owns trademarks for “three-peat,” but news outlets regularly use it in sports coverage.
Confronted about the email, Laurin claimed it was “tongue-in-cheek [and] sarcastic.”
The repeat Select Board hopeful said he never assumed Riley would actually get his email. At the same time, he said he wished he’d “taken my own advice to ‘read your emails twice to make sure they will be interpreted the way you intend; and make sure you send it to the right person!’”
While Laurin backpedaled and a legal expert said a trademark case would stand little chance in court, some framed the incident against the backdrop of Tuesday’s town election — including the man who actually received Laurin’s email.
‘Serious questions’
In his message, Laurin urged Riley to “enforce your rights against The Bridge’s blatant violation.” He also asked Riley to avoid mentioning his name when contacting The Bridge, confiding, “This is a very small town.”
Rather than making its way to sunny South Florida, Laurin’s “three-peat” message landed in the inbox of Concord resident Pat Riley, who isn’t related to the NBA Hall of Famer — but gets a lot of his (electronic) mail.
Riley said he was “shocked” when he realized the sender of the “three-peat” message was running for public office in Concord. In a post on Nextdoor, he called it “an astoundingly unlucky coincidence for Mr. Laurin, but a lucky one for the voters of Concord” that the note ended up in the account of a local.
Initially, Riley forwarded the email to The Bridge. Managing Editor Celeste Katz Marston said the paper, which does not endorse or oppose any candidate for public office, ultimately decided against publishing a story at that time because “The Concord Bridge would much rather cover the news than become the news itself.”
Riley took his concerns to social media, where he said Laurin’s email showed “a profound lack of judgment and a poor view of what is in the interests of” Concord. Riley said that the email should “raise serious questions for anyone considering having [Laurin] represent our interests on the Select Board.”
The Nextdoor post sparked a flood of responses. Some decried Laurin for encouraging legal action. Others questioned the story or critiqued The Bridge. And some people asked to hear Laurin’s perspective. As queries about the issue circulated in online forums, the Bridge decided to reach out to Laurin.
Put it in writing
Beginning on Friday, Laurin repeatedly dodged Concord Bridge efforts to ask him about the dustup in person and over the phone, insisting on communicating in writing.
On Monday, he rushed out of Concord-Carlisle High School after a candidate forum that ended around 9 p.m., claiming he had a meeting to attend. He was accompanied by a top donor, Mark Martines, who repeatedly tried to discourage a reporter from interviewing Laurin, saying at one point, “Don’t be annoying.”
In his written response to Bridge questions on Tuesday, Laurin described himself as a huge basketball fan who had lived in Chicago when Riley trademarked “three-peat.” He reiterated that he did not think “any real action on [the trademark issue] would be taken against The Bridge,” which he said “plays a valuable role in our great town,” as a result of his email.
While he insisted he had been joking, Concord’s Pat Riley said Laurin’s request to stay anonymous in any action against The Bridge jumped out at him.
“That just said to me that he was aware that what he was doing was likely unpopular,” Riley said in an interview.
‘Pretty weak sauce’
NBA exec Riley’s trademarks cover the use of “three-peat” on products from mugs and tankards to bumper stickers.
The Bridge reached out to multiple Riley representatives about trademark enforcement, but did not hear back prior to publication.
But attorney Josh Dalton, who heads the global trademark and copyright litigation practice at Morgan Lewis in Boston, said the effort to embroil The Bridge in a “three-peat” trademark case was “pretty weak sauce.” He said trademarks are meant to protect brands and reputations — not put words entirely off limits.
Dalton said the First Amendment provides “an additional sort of veneer” around media use. But press protections aside, he said this use of “three-peat” would still be protected since The Bridge used the word for its commonly understood meaning (which Dalton noted is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a third consecutive championship”).
The expert said anyone trying to bring a claim like the one Laurin suggested “would be laughed out of court.”
A judge might even order a complainant to foot the defendant’s legal bills, Dalton said, “because it’s just a baseless claim.”
