NEW YORK (AP) – The girl scouts are in a ‘very damaging’ recruitment war with the Boy Scouts after the latter opened up its core services to girls, causing confusion in the marketplace and some girls unwittingly joining the Boy Scouts, lawyers for the century. old Girl Scouts organization’s claim in papers filed in federal court.
Competition, more suspicion than reality two years ago, has increased as the Boy Scouts of America organization – which insists that recruits pledge to be “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, polite, and nice” – have been dishonest girls lately. recruited, according to claims in legal letters filed on behalf of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America.
The attorneys filed papers in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday to fend off an attempt by the Boy Scouts to open a trademark infringement lawsuit filed by the Girl Scouts in 2018 before the trial.
Last month, Boy Scout attorneys asked a judge to dismiss allegations that the Boy Scouts cannot use “scouts” and “scouting” in recruiting girls without infringing trademarks.
It called the lawsuit “completely creditable.”
Messages requesting comment on Girl Scouts ‘latest filing were sent to Boy Scouts’ lawyers on Saturday.
In the filing, the Girl Scouts said the Boy Scouts’ marketing of comprehensive services to girls was “extremely and very damaging to Girl Scouts” and had caused an “explosion of confusion.”
“As a result of the Boy Scout violation, parents falsely registered their daughters with Boy Scouts, thinking they were Boy Scouts,” the lawyers said, adding that this never happened before 2018.
The girl scouts said they can prove “rampant cases of confusion and misassociations between Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts” after the Boy Scouts attacked girls and their parents with marketing and recruiting communications in a way never before.
“The parties’ programs, which show many similarities, are now directly competitive,” said the girl scouts.
The organization cited evidence from a limited subset of documents submitted by 19 of the 250 local Boy Scout Councils, including evidence that registration fees were sometimes reimbursed to parents who falsely believed they had registered girls for the Boy Scouts.
It said repeated instances of confusion and interference at the local level by the Boy Scouts were a tiny fraction of what was happening across the country.
Every dozen 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, the lawyers said.
“According to Boy Scouts, the rampant confusion in the marketplace is at everyone’s feet, but his own,” they wrote.
Both the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, like other major youth organizations, have seen membership decline in recent years as competition for the pandemic grew through sporting competitions 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 Scouts BSA in early 2019. The parent organization, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Cub Scouts, a program for kindergarten through fifth graders, 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.
After that, the Boy Scouts councils and volunteers began to use Girl Scouts’ intellectual property to recruit girls. They used targeted ads with terms like “Scout, Scouts, Scouting, Scout Me In and Scouts BSA,” the lawyers wrote.
“Boy Scouts were well aware in 2017, as they did in the 1930s and 1970s, that SCOUT, SCOUTS and SCOUTING, when used in connection with girl services, could only create associations with girl scouts, unless other distinctive content referring to Boy Scouts of America appeared in advertising and promotional materials, ”they said. “But it did anyway, and the only credible inference is that the motive was to leave Girl Scouts’ impeccable reputation and cement its position in a ‘new market – Girls in Scouting.’ ”
The attorneys said Boy Scout Councils in Illinois recognize that they were misusing the Boy Scout slogan in Cub Scout recruiting materials and photos of Girl Scouts to mark the “Scouts Sign-Up Night!”
They said a Western Massachusetts Boy Scouts council posted a recruitment brochure on Facebook with a photo of a girl depicted in her Girl Scouts Brownie uniform.
Meanwhile, Ohio Boy Scouts used the trademark Girl Scouts to try to get a local newspaper to write an article, suggesting a storyline titled “Boy and Girl Scouts Looking for Members,” although the recruiting involved only the Boy Scouts. , the lawyers said.
In Seattle, a Boy Scouts council used the trademark Girl Scouts in social media recruiting materials, the lawyers said.
They said the confusion among children, parents, schools and religious organizations has exploded, and they cited examples in other states, including Florida, Minnesota, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina, and Hawaii.