The Girl Scouts organization accused the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) of “damaging” recruitment tactics after opening their basic services to girls.
Judicial documents were filed Thursday in federal courts seeking to challenge lawyers for the BSA to launch a case of trademark infringement registered by Girl Scouts in 2018.
The Girl Scouts of the United States of America claim that the BSA has unfairly recruited girls, according to legal statements, The Associated Press reported.
Girl Scouts claim that BSA’s use of the terms “scouts” and “scouting” infringes the organization’s trademarks.
However, the Boy Scouts of America’s attorneys previously called the allegations “totally useless.”
According to documents filed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, the Girl Scouts alleged that the marketing of their services to BSA girls was “extraordinary and highly detrimental to the Girl Scouts,” adding that it ignited a ” explosion of confusion “.
“As a result of the Boy Scouts infraction, parents have mistakenly enrolled their daughters in Boy Scouts thinking it was Girl Scouts,” said lawyers, who added that this never happened before 2018.
In the spring of 2018, the program for 11- to 17-year-old boys announced that it would change its name to BSA Scouts to house girls. The Boy Scouts of America, the parent organization, kept its name, including the name of its younger cohorts called Cub Scouts, according to the AP.
BSA Scouts began accepting girls in 2019.
The Girl Scouts alleged that they could prove “unbridled cases of confusion and wrong cases of association between Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts,” following a large amount of marketing content that the BSA launched aimed at girls and parents with recruitment communications they had not used before, according to the news source.
The Girl Scouts submitted documents from 19 of 250 local Boy Scout councils that reportedly showed cases where the Boy Scouts had to return enrollment fees to parents who would confuse the organization with the Girl Scouts.
The organization alleges that the BSA has blamed the confusion on everyone else except themselves, according to the cabling service.
Lawyers cited multiple examples from different chapters in states across the nation. One account alleged that a board of the Seattle Boy Scouts used the Girl Scouts trademark in social media recruiting materials.
The Hill contacted the BSA for comments.