NEW YORK (AP) – Girl Scouts are in a “highly damaging” recruitment war with Boy Scouts after they opened their main services to girls, causing confusion in the market and some girls inadvertently joining Boy Scouts, say lawyers for the centenary Girl Scout organization in court papers.
The competition, more conjecture than reality two years ago, intensified as the Boy Scouts of America organization – which insists that recruits commit to being “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous and kind” – recently recruited girls unfairly, as stated in legal documents filed on behalf of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America.
The lawyers filed papers in the Manhattan federal court on Thursday to repel a Scout effort to kick off a trademark infringement lawsuit that the Scouts filed in 2018 before the trial.
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Last month, Scout attorneys asked a judge to reject claims that Scouts cannot use “Scouts” and “Scouting” in their recruitment of girls without infringing trademarks.
They classified the process as “totally without merit”.
ARCHIVE – In this June 18, 2018 archive photo, patches cover the back of a Girl Scout vest in a demonstration of some of their activities in Seattle. The Girl Scouts of the United States of America say the centennial organization is in a “highly damaging” recruitment war with the Boy Scouts of America after the group opened its basic services for girls, causing confusion in the market and some girls inadvertently joining the Boy Scouts. (AP Photo / Elaine Thompson, Archives)
The Boy Scouts on Saturday pointed to legal arguments in which they blame the Girl Scouts for reacting to their expansion plans with “anger and alarm” and said the Girl Scouts launched a “land war” to spoil the Boy Scouts’ plans to include more girls.
In a statement, the Boy Scouts said they expanded program offerings for girls “after years of requests from families” who wanted their boys and girls to participate in their character and leadership programs or for other reasons, including the desire to become one. scout.
“We applaud all organizations that build character and leadership in children, including the Girl Scouts of the USA, and we believe that all families and communities benefit from the opportunity to select the programs that best meet their needs,” said the statement.
In their process, Girl Scouts said that Scout marketing for expanded girl services was “extraordinary and highly damaging to Girl Scouts” and had triggered an “explosion of confusion”.
“As a result of the Boy Scout offense, parents mistakenly enrolled their daughters in the Boy Scouts thinking they were Boy Scouts,” said the lawyers, adding that this never happened before 2018.
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The Girl Scouts said they can prove that there are “rampant instances of confusion and misleading instances of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts” after the Boy Scouts directed girls and their parents into marketing and recruiting communications in a way never seen before.
In their statement, however, the Boy Scouts said: “To imply that confusion is a prevalent reason for your choice is not only inaccurate – with no legally permissible instance of it offered so far – but it also rejects the decisions of more than 120,000 girls and young women who have joined BSA Boy Scouts or Boy Scouts since the programs became available to them. “
“The party programs, which have many similarities, are now directly competitive,” said the Girl Scouts.
The organization cited evidence of a small subset of documents delivered by 19 of the 250 local Boy Scout Councils, including evidence that registration fees were sometimes returned to parents who mistakenly thought they registered girls for Girl Scouts.
According to the report, the repeated cases of confusion and local interference by the Boy Scouts was a small fraction of what was happening across the country.
Each of the dozens of times the Girl Scouts complained about unfair marketing, the Boy Scouts responded by blaming individuals, churches or others for what they said was an isolated incident, lawyers said.
“According to the Boy Scouts, the blame for the market’s unrestrained confusion rests on everyone but their own,” they wrote.
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Scouts and Scouts, as well as other large youth organizations, have seen declines in membership in recent years, as competition grew before the pandemic of sports leagues and busy family agendas.
In the spring of 2018, the Boy Scout program for 11-17 year olds announced that it would change its name to BSA Boy Scouts in early 2019. The main organization, the Boy Scouts of America and Boy Scouts, a program that caters to children from childhood through fifth grade, they kept their names.
The organization began admitting girls to Boy Scouts in August 2018, and BSA Boy Scouts began accepting girls in February 2019, lawyers said.
Subsequently, Scout councils and volunteers began using Girl Scout intellectual property to recruit girls, employing targeted advertisements, using terms such as “Scouts, Scouts, Scouting, Scout Me In and Scouts BSA,” wrote the lawyers.
Scouts claim, however, that “indisputable evidence” proves that Scouts have used the “Scout” alone for more than 100 years and in connection with the marketing of some mixed services to young people for nearly 50 years.
She said that hundreds of thousands of pages of documents produced in the judicial process and more than 40 testimony from witnesses prove that Scouts have never been involved in trademark infringement or created confusion for consumers.
Girl Scout lawyers said the Scout Councils in Illinois recognized the improper use of the Girl Scout slogan in Girl Scout recruiting materials and Girl Scout pictures to promote a “Boy Scout Registration Night!”
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They said a western Massachusetts scout council posted a recruitment pamphlet on Facebook, including a photograph of a girl in her Brownie Girl Scout uniform.
Meanwhile, Ohio Boy Scouts used the Girl Scouts’ trademark to try to get a local newspaper to write an article, suggesting a storyline entitled “Boy Scouts and Boy Scouts looking for members,” although recruitment involved only Boy Scouts, lawyers said.
In Seattle, a Boy Scout Council used the Girl Scout trademark in social media recruitment materials, lawyers said.
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They said the confusion skyrocketed among children, parents, schools and religious organizations and cited examples in other states, including Florida, Minnesota, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina and Hawaii.