LAWSUIT Las Vegas fights to make slogan entirely its own

A California clothing company is using variants of the famous phrase.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
LAS VEGAS -- The five-word slogan turned out to be a marketing masterpiece, a mantra that marked the unceremonious end of Las Vegas' family-friendly era and the full-scale resurrection of Sin City: "What happens here stays here."
But keeping those words in Las Vegas has become a contentious matter.
A potentially high-stakes lawsuit is unfolding in federal court in Reno over trademark rights to the famous phrase.
And in Las Vegas, the slogan has managed to spark a political dispute as well.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which says it spent $85 million in the last three years to link Las Vegas with the slogan, wants licensing rights to the phrase and its many variants.
Company in question
The authority is seeking a cease-and-desist order against a California-based clothier that sells racy underwear, as well as baseball caps and sweat pants, reading "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!" in local hotels and gift stores.
The clothing company, acting without permission from the tourism authority, managed to get federal trademark approval for the phrase earlier this year.
The manufacturer, Pure Pleasure of Placerville, plans to sell clothes carrying variations on the phrase -- such as "What happens on spring break stays on spring break!"
Las Vegas wants to put a stop to it. But with licensing rights worth potentially millions of dollars on the line, the clothing company is fighting back in court, arguing that Las Vegas is hardly the first place in the world where people have promised to look the other way.
Previous appearances
There's that old saying among traveling salesmen: "What happens on the road stays on the road."
And the one from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings: "What you see here, what you hear here, whom you see here, stays here."
The clothing company's lawyers also cite a sign in a now-defunct Cambridge, Mass., tavern that declared, "What happens here, stays here." That was nearly 10 years before Las Vegas launched its ad campaign.
As zany as the legal arguments might seem, the case is a powerful indication of just how valuable the phrase has become since Las Vegas launched the campaign in late 2002.