BSA Licensing

The Boy Scouts of America has launched a comprehensive licensing program. Any Pack, Troop, Crew or Council must purchase any item bearing a BSA trademark from an officially licensed vendor.

From the BSA Licensing Opportunities website:

"For some, this will be a significant change in the way products, like T-shirts or patches, are purchased. In the past, you may have simply given a BSA trademark to a third party for reproduction, and while this third party did not have authorization to reproduce the trademark on a T-shirt or patch, the third party may have created a product anyway. The National Council’s clarification should help you to understand that, in the future, you should use only BSA Official Licensees to produce products bearing BSA trademarks."

According to the website protected BSA trademarks include " ... just about any mark that reasonably relates to BSA or its program ..."

If I am reading this right I can no longer have our Troop t-shirts printed by the same local business that has produced them for us for a dozen years or so unless they obtain a license from the BSA, a process that begins with a $250.00 application fee and ends with the supplier paying royalties to the BSA for each of the products they produce.

"Official Licensees are contractually bound to and regularly monitored by the BSA to ensure that they adhere to product quality standards, maintain levels of insurance necessary to protect the end user in the case of product failure, and abide by a code of conduct that compels them, among other things, to provide acceptable working conditions for those producing products bearing BSA trademarks. Products that do not bear the Officially Licensed Product seal are not produced to BSA standards, and therefore are not authorized by the Boy Scouts of America."

I can understand that the BSA wants to control and protect the use of trademarks and the goals of the program are laudable. I also understand that this will add, at a minimum, two or three dollars a piece to the tee shirts we buy and force us to send our money outside our community.  That a percentage of these dollars will go to the BSA for royalties is, I suppose, fair and reasonable. I fear the cost in goodwill will be much greater than the rewards.

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