In 2002, attorney Greg Wrenn started a youth group call “Youthscouts” because he wanted his daughter to participate in an organization, unlike the Boy Scouts, that does not discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. But despite countless uses of the word “scouts” before Boy Scouts of America was formed in 1910, and the existence in following years of the American Boy Scouts, the New England Boy Scouts, and the Lone Scouts of America, the Boy Scouts of America is now suing Youthscouts for violating its alleged trademark in the word “Scouts.”
BSA claims that allowing a group to call itself “Youthscouts” would “cause confusion, deception, mistake, and misrepresentation.” BSA also cites the congressional charter that the organization received in 1950 – a grant similar to the 1987 statute that gave the U.S. Olympics Committee exclusive rights in the word “Olympics.”
The case pitting BSA against Youthscouts is scheduled to go to trial on January 26, 2009. Argues Wrenn: “At stake is nothing less than whether independent scouting, as intended by [BSA founder] Baden-Powell, and as it existed in the United States prior to 1924, and as it still exists in other countries around the world, will be permitted to exist in the United States again.”