Copycat slogans

Does what happens in Las Vegas really stay in Las Vegas? Not if you're talking about the city's fabulously successful advertising slogan, which is being aped across the country.

Local tourism officials last week again debated the issue of copycats trying to cash in by lifting the slogan for their own purposes.

The latest case involves a woman who wants to sell shirts at the Kentucky Derby which read, "What happens at Derby stays at Derby."

On Tuesday the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority voted 11-0 to oppose the trademark application for the derby ware.

The board is currently fighting a half dozen other battles over the trademarked slogan.

Ignoring even the most minor trademark violations, the argument goes, makes it harder to oppose more serious infringements. That's why there's a cottage industry of attorneys ready to fire off cease-and-desist letters to publications that fail to capitalize trademarked terms such as Realtor or Kleenex. "If we don't fight this one, our argument to dispute dilution may be compromised," Luke Puschnig, an attorney for the convention authority, said of the Kentucky case.

Perhaps. But does there ever come a point at which the costs outweigh the benefits? Since 2002, the convention authority has spent $131 million on ads featuring the slogan. In the meantime, it's forked over more than $732,000 trying to protect the slogan from copycats -- including $623,000 on a Reno case set to go to court later this month.

In fact, aren't those trumpeting their knock-off versions of "What happens here stays here" actually helping advance the convention authority's marketing efforts?

"This is not going to be the last of these," Mayor Oscar Goodman said of the derby T-shirts. "If it doesn't hurt us, I'm not sure we want to spend the money to stop it."

Good point.