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I haven't been able to get the site to load, so I'm committing the venial Hacker News sin of commenting without reading the article, but I'm assuming this is so

I haven't been able to get the site to load, so I'm committing the venial Hacker News sin of commenting without reading the article, but I'm assuming this is somehow "trademark-related". I don't know what the branding of Hacker Scouts is, movies have always seemed able to skirt the BSA trademark issue by calling themselves things like "Wilderness Scouts", etc. So I'd imagine it would be hard for the BSA to claim ownership of the entire "scouting" landscape. I assume these people don't have access to the capital necessary to fight this in court, which is a shame. As an Eagle Scout who has been pretty unhappy with the conduct of the BSA since my teenage years, I would be very happy to see them lose a case like this (although that's easy for me to say, as I'm not on the hook financially for it).

anigbrowl 13y ago
With movies it's a little different. If I write a fictional story featuring the 'imagination scouts' I'm not really infringing on their mark because I'm mentioning a fictional organization with a similar name - I can't mention BSA because that might imply endorsement or participation by them, but it's OK to mention an organization of similar type. But if I'm running Hacker Scouts, now I'm actually competing with BSA for members to some degree, so if there's any danger of consumers being confused by the similarity of the marks then the obligation is on me to change it. Courts treat this 'consumer confusion' as key. As a third example, if I came up with a brand called 'Night Scouts,' but the brand was attached to a line of night-vision goggles rather than a membership organization, a court would (I hope) find a low probability of confusion between the two as long as the packaging for my product didn't use any graphics, slogans, iconography etc. that suggested a connection with BSA. BSA might claim that they had total ownership of anything involving the word 'scout' whatsoever, but a court would usually find that claim overbroad. However, that doesn't mean BSA would be wrong to make the claim. One peculiar things about trademarks (and quite different from copyright) is that courts take a 'defend it or lose it' view - so if there's a possibility of infringement, then the trademark owner basically has to make a fuss about it. If they don't, then later they may have trouble with halting a genuine case of infringement. So when you hear stories of trademark holders suing over very faint similarities, it's not that they really really want to shut everyone else down, but that they're going on the legal record as aggressively defending their mark against any possible infringer. If they failed to do so, someone else might point to their non-action as evidence that they had voluntarily abandoned the mark. Sort of perverse, but there you go.
- eru 13y ago
  > One peculiar things about trademarks (and quite different from copyright) is that courts take a 'defend it or lose it' view - so if there's a possibility of infringement, then the trademark owner basically has to make a fuss about it. If they don't, then later they may have trouble with halting a genuine case of infringement. And that's not only US law. If memory serves right, e.g. German laws are similar.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    I forget the name but there's a fairly widely accepted international treaty about this, since trademarks are almost as old as trade itself.
malandrew 13y ago
As an Eagle Scout, write to the BSA and express your displeasure with these heavy handed tactics.

anigbrowl 13y ago

With movies it's a little different. If I write a fictional story featuring the 'imagination scouts' I'm not really infringing on their mark because I'm mentioning a fictional organization with a similar name - I can't mention BSA because that might imply endorsement or participation by them, but it's OK to mention an organization of similar type. But if I'm running Hacker Scouts, now I'm actually competing with BSA for members to some degree, so if there's any danger of consumers being confused by the similarity of the marks then the obligation is on me to change it. Courts treat this 'consumer confusion' as key. As a third example, if I came up with a brand called 'Night Scouts,' but the brand was attached to a line of night-vision goggles rather than a membership organization, a court would (I hope) find a low probability of confusion between the two as long as the packaging for my product didn't use any graphics, slogans, iconography etc. that suggested a connection with BSA. BSA might claim that they had total ownership of anything involving the word 'scout' whatsoever, but a court would usually find that claim overbroad. However, that doesn't mean BSA would be wrong to make the claim. One peculiar things about trademarks (and quite different from copyright) is that courts take a 'defend it or lose it' view - so if there's a possibility of infringement, then the trademark owner basically has to make a fuss about it. If they don't, then later they may have trouble with halting a genuine case of infringement. So when you hear stories of trademark holders suing over very faint similarities, it's not that they really really want to shut everyone else down, but that they're going on the legal record as aggressively defending their mark against any possible infringer. If they failed to do so, someone else might point to their non-action as evidence that they had voluntarily abandoned the mark. Sort of perverse, but there you go.

eru 13y ago
> One peculiar things about trademarks (and quite different from copyright) is that courts take a 'defend it or lose it' view - so if there's a possibility of infringement, then the trademark owner basically has to make a fuss about it. If they don't, then later they may have trouble with halting a genuine case of infringement. And that's not only US law. If memory serves right, e.g. German laws are similar.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I forget the name but there's a fairly widely accepted international treaty about this, since trademarks are almost as old as trade itself.

malandrew 13y ago

As an Eagle Scout, write to the BSA and express your displeasure with these heavy handed tactics.