The massive Resorts World Las Vegas property will open in about two years, the first new sprawling, luxury casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip in a long time. None of the companies and people that run the other casinos on the Strip could be overly thrilled with new competition, though having an empty lot where the old Stardust was wouldn’t be good either. Wynn Resorts, though, has a particular beef with its upcoming neighbor, as it has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming that Resorts World looks too much like the Wynn Las Vegas and Encore properties.
Anyone who has been to Las Vegas is familiar with the fairly distinctive Wynn look: the curved, concave, bronze glass building with its rows of windows separated by horizontal cream-colored bands.
While the merits of the lawsuit are debatable, Wynn isn’t totally out of bounds. Resorts World, currently under construction, will have a similar curved design. And based on artist renderings found on the Resorts World site, it will have a similar color, as well, though it does not look like there will be that familiar cream banding.
There will be red incorporated into the architecture, though, as Resorts World will be a Chinese-themed resort, complete with a gigantic globe hanging from the roof that looks like it is meant to resemble a paper lantern.
“The architectural design embodied in defendant’s Resorts World Las Vegas hotel and casino is substantially similar to plaintiff’s registered copyrighted architectural work, and therefore defendant is violating plaintiff’s copyrights in addition to plaintiff’s registered and common law trade dress,” the lawsuit reads.
There are five total counts presented in the lawsuit:
• Federal trade dress infringement
• Unfair competition and false designation of origin
• Federal trademark dilution
• State trademark dilution
• Copyright infringement
Wynn basically wants Resorts World to change its design so as not to conflict with Wynn’s. It also wants a share of Resorts World’s profits it earns as the result of the similar design elements, however that would work.
As mentioned, Resorts World is being built on the former site of the Stardust, located just north of Wynn and Encore on the opposite side of the Las Vegas Strip. Stardust was razed in 2007 and its owner, Boyd Gaming, started construction on Echelon Place, but when the economy took a dive in 2008, plans were changed and the property was sold to the Genting Group in 2013. Genting had originally planned to begin construction – using some of the existing Echelon structures – in 2014, with the first phase to open in two to three years.
Redesigns and other delays pushed things back. The groundbreaking didn’t happen until May 2015; at that point, the property was expected to open in the middle part of this year. They are now looking at a late-2020 opening. More than thirty floors have been built.
