By Richard John Mathews, Deputy General Counsel and David Harkins, Associate Director, Business Development (Licensing and Royalty Programs)

Protecting the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) marks, words and phrases is an ongoing and difficult task for the organization. Over the years, thousands of companies and individuals have used BSA trademarks without permission in advertising and promotional materials, and on everything from websites to merchandise. Because the Boy Scouts of America is a non-profit organization, many think that its trademarks are available for public use without authorization, based largely on the belief that their use of the marks promotes and supports the Scouting movement. While in some cases this has proven to be true, most individuals are using BSA trademarks to benefit personally from the power of the BSA brand and the good will the organization enjoys with America’s public.

To address the ongoing problem of unauthorized use, BSA formed the Trademark Enforcement Team in March 2006, and empowered this team to lead enforcement efforts for the Boy Scouts of America brand, marks, words and phrases. The Team, with representatives from BSA Legal, Supply Group, Custom Communications Division (CCD) and Information Services Division (ISD), has initially focused on online enforcement and working with an outside Internet monitoring service has been successful in identifying (through May 31, 2007) approximately 2,200 websites potentially containing unauthorized use of the Boy Scouts of America trademarks. Among the most notable successes in recent months has been shutting down the pornography website, boyslife.com (BSA’s website is boyslife.org) and securing the domain name for the BSA.

While Internet enforcement of unauthorized use of BSA trademarks is an important part of our trademark protection process, BSA Legal also regularly addresses issues of infringement and unauthorized use of the organizations trademarks offline, through targeted cease and desist letters, as well as further legal action as may be required.

Such actions, which may be difficult for some to understand, are necessary to protect and enforce the proper use of the BSA’s trademarks and, in part, to protect these trademarks from entering the common language (or public domain), such as Aspirin and Kleenex (once trademarks of specific companies, which have become generic way of describing a product). To allow Eagle Scout®, Cub Scouts® or other BSA trademarks to fall into public domain for anyone to use without the BSA’s oversight and control, would significantly devalue our programs in the eyes of our alumni, current and prospective members.

We encourage all members, volunteers, and council staff to support efforts to protect the BSA trademarks by making sure that proper attributions (including ® , ™ and ©) are not removed from any BSA mark (logo), word or phrase, and by buying and encouraging others to buy, only Official Boy Scouts of America products purchased from BSA Supply or from BSA Officially Licensed suppliers. Information and a listing of licensees can be found at: www.bsalicensing.org