As was recently reported in the Boston Globe this past fall, on a trip to Las Vegas to promote its hometown as a destination for holding conventions, the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau decided to use a slogan conceived of a few years ago: “What Happens in Boston Changes the World.”
Never a town to let one past them, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authoritynot only took note; it threatened legal action against the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau in a letter complaining that the phrase bore so much resemblance to its “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas” trademark that it was likely to cause customer confusion and dilute the distinctiveness of the Las Vegas brand.
In response, legal counsel for the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau has proposed to retire Boston’s slogan last week, after using it one last time at a trade show being held at the Hynes Convention Center.
The real question here is: does Las Vegas’s confusion claim even have any merit? A likelihood of confusion exists only if, upon seeing Boston’s allegedly infringing slogan, a consumer would probably assume that the services of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau were sponsored by or otherwise affiliated with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. And since, granted, the alleged infringer and the trademark owner deal in competing services (here, travel), courts might not even look beyond the slogans themselves.
But are the slogans confusingly similar simply because they share the same first three words? The variation in connotation, meaning and sound of the marks suggest that the two share little in common. Because of this, among various other obvious reasons (consider Boston’s lack of brightly-lit hotel/casino/resort establishments, its non-desert climate, and its abundant colonial history and architecture), it seems rather unlikely that Boston’s advertising slogan would make it difficult for prospective tourists to differentiate between the two destinations, or the origin of the services, for that matter. While the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority may have reason for aggressively protecting its well-developed brand, it’s possible it would have been better had this one just stayed in Vegas.
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