NEW YORK (AP) – Girl Scouts are in a “very damaging” recruitment war with Boy Scouts after they open their basic services to girls, causing confusion in the market and some girls join unwittingly to the Boy Scouts, lawyers of the century. former claim of the Girl Scouts organization in papers filed in federal court.
The competition, more assumed than it was two years ago, has intensified as the Boy Scouts of America organization insists that recruits commit to being “reliable, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous and kind.” ) has been unfairly recruiting girls lately, according to legal writs filed on behalf of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America.
Lawyers filed papers Thursday in Manhattan federal court to dismiss an effort by the Boy Scouts to file a lawsuit for trademark infringement that the Girl Scouts filed in 2018 before the trial.
Last month, Boy Scout lawyers asked a judge to dismiss claims that Boy Scouts cannot use “scouts” and “scouting” in recruiting girls without infringing trademarks.
He called the lawsuit “totally useless.”
Messages seeking comments on the latest Girl Scouts presentation were sent to Boy Scouts lawyers on Saturday.
In their presentation, the Girl Scouts said the marketing of expanded services for Boy Scout girls was “extraordinary and highly detrimental to Girl Scouts” and had caused an “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.
The Girl Scouts said they can show that there are “unbridled cases of confusion and wrong cases of association between Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts” after the Boy Scouts addressed the girls and their parents with marketing communications and recruiting in ways he had never had before.
“The parties’ programs, which have a lot of similarities, are now directly competitive, ”the Girls Scouts maintained.
The organization cited evidence from a narrow subset of documents submitted by 19 of 250 local Boy Scout councils, including evidence that registration fees were sometimes returned to parents who mistakenly thought girls had enrolled in Girl Scouts. .
It was said that repeated cases of confusion and interference at the local level by the Boy Scouts were a small fraction of what was happening across the country.
Each of the dozens of times Girl Scouts complained about unfair marketing, Boy Scouts responded by blaming people, churches, or others for what they said was an isolated incident, lawyers said.
“According to Boy Scouts, the blame for the rampant market confusion lies at the feet of everyone but theirs,” they wrote.
Both the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, as well as other large youth organizations, have seen their membership decline in recent years as competition has previously grown into sports leagues and busy family schedules.
In the spring of 2018, the Boy Scouts program for 11- to 17-year-olds announced that it would change its name to BSA Scouts in early 2019. The main organization, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Cub Scouts , a program that serves children from kindergarten to fifth grade, kept their names.
The organization began admitting girls to the Cub Scouts in August 2018 and Scouts BSA began accepting girls in February 2019, lawyers said.
Then Boy Scout councils and volunteers began using Girl Scouts’ intellectual property to recruit girls, using specific advertising through terms such as “Scout, Scouts, Scouting, Scout Me In, and BSA Scouts,” the lawyers wrote. .
“The Boy Scouts knew full well in 2017, as they did in the 1930s and 1970s, that SCOUT, SCOUTS and SCOUTING, when used in connection with girls’ services, could only form partnerships with Girl Scouts unless there had other content referring to the United States appeared in advertising and promotional materials, “they said.” But he did it anyway, and the only plausible inference is that his motive was to break free from reputation. ” impeccable “of Girl Scouts and increase their position in a” new market: girls in Scouting. “
Lawyers said Illinois Boy Scout councils recognized the misuse of the Girl Scouts slogan in Cub Scout by recruiting Girl Scouts materials and images to promote “Scout Enrollment Night!” Of the Boy Scouts.
They said a council of Boy Scouts in western Massachusetts posted a recruitment pamphlet on Facebook that included a photograph of a girl depicted in her Girl Scouts Brownie uniform.
Meanwhile, the Ohio Boy Scouts used the Girl Scouts trademark to try to get a local newspaper to write an article, suggesting an argument entitled “Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts Looking for Members,” even though the recruitment only involved Boy Scouts, lawyers said.
In Seattle, a Boy Scouts council used the Girl Scouts trademark on social media to recruit materials, lawyers said.
They said confusion has spread among children, parents, schools and religious organizations and cited examples in other states, such as Florida, Minnesota, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina and Hawaii.