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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Comments

[Ivan Hazelton]

Or you can do as our troop did, from before I joined the Troop in the late 70's or early 80's, and not use any BSA intellectual property in your troop logo. Then you can send it off to Cafepress or CustomInk.

Here is what our logo looks like.

The only sticking point might be the little tiny fleur-de-lis (FDL) in the logo. But I am pretty sure the BSA doesn't have exclusive rights to the use of the FDL, as a trademark.

However that doesn't work for patches and the like for events which must include those things.

-Ivan Hazelton

[Clarke Green]

I thought about that Ivan. The licensing language is so closely written that there is really no way around it unless you are willing to ignore it, which is an ethical question.

If you look at the licensing site it is abundantly clear that the intention of the program is not to create loopholes but to require any entity (units, councils etc.) to purchase trademark items only from licensed vendors.

Dodging this by somehow declaring a Scout tee-shirt is not really a Scout tee-shirt is as valid as taking the Troop out to shoot paintball by saying that the outing is not really a Scout outing. Neither is ethical or conscionable to my thinking

[Ivan Hazelton]

ARRGH! It got rid of my link.... it looked ok in 'preview'...let's try another way...

http://cafepress.com/troop_700

[CA Scouter]

Thanks for passing on this information. This is one reason I follow your blog; you always seem to have very timely and relevant information.

This is terrible news. It sounds exactly like the policy which GSUSA has regarding its logo. What I have seen here in CA is that the net effect for GSUSA is that the official logo is now NEVER used on any patches or materials not produced by national. As a result, any Council official event where the girls get a Tshirt or patch has NOTHING on it which indicates the event was a Girl Scout event. Almost as if the group were ashamed of its affiliation.

You are also correct that the price of working thru the sanctioned distributor jacks up the price. It also slows things way down, because the number of allowed vendors is much less. This may be the real reason why the logo never shows up anymore; it is just too much trouble to try to get it done.

I predict the same effects from this BSA policy. If I get time, I am going to complain to National. This disastrous policy needs to be reversed.

In the past I have had patches commissioned for Scout Sunday. I invite the Girl Scouts and make it a joint event (I know the GSUSA has its own day, but I like Scouts to celebrate together). When I first started doing it, I sought permission to use the GSUSA logo and would never get a straight answer. I finally stopped asking, and put on the traditional Trefoil next to the Fleur de lis. My reasoning was that the program belonged to the girls and they would want their program recognized on the patch. Now it appears that I have the same dilemma with BSA. Similar reasoning will be tempting; I'd use a very old Fleur-de-lis symbol. Of course BSA is welcome to sue a church group to stop me. That is bound to do wonders for BSA's image.

[CA Scouter]

Ivan,
I have to surrender to your troop's awesomeness. My troop does not have its own troop boxers. :-)