Editorial: Light shone on deal

Saturday, July 2, 2005 | 12:04 p.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

July 2-3, 2005

It has been one week since the Las Vegas Sun revealed that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority had, for $1, sold away the rights to its potentially lucrative advertising slogan, "What happens here, stays here." R&R Partners, the advertising firm that is paid $66.5 million annually to promote and market Las Vegas, received the rights in a secret deal last November, rights that include using the slogan on T-shirts and souvenirs. The board that oversees the LVCVA, whose members are made up principally of local government officials, wasn't told about the deal when it was made.

Since the disclosure of the secret contract, LVCVA President Rossi Ralenkotter and R&R's CEO, Billy Vassiliadis, have tried to downplay the significance of this deal. They contend the arrangement was simply a way for R&R, which had more experience in dealing with cases involving trademark infringement, to legally stop the unauthorized use of the internationally popular slogan. Ralenkotter and Vassiliadis also say that there never was any intention to profit from it. But if that was the case, why all the secrecy? The more we learn about this arrangement, the more troubling it becomes. On Friday the Sun reported that two nationally known trademark attorneys said that R&R clearly could profit from the arrangement. It seems strange to us that something that LVCVA and R&R believe is of such tremendous value -- R&R is willing to go to court to stop its unauthori zed use -- is only worth $1. We believe there is more going on here than what we have been told so far. The LVCVA's board, when it takes up the issue on July 12, should demand a full accounting.