Congressional Charter

[Peregrinator]

The SpiralScouts apparently did respond to the Boy Scouts of America and the BSA never responded. 

 

Right you are, at least according to this article:

http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/scouting-for-alternatives/Content?oid=2183622

 

"When asked if Spiral Scouts has ever been formally contacted by the Boy Scouts of America, Callahan reports that the organization received a letter, accompanied by a cease-and-desist order that stated that the word “scouts†was trademarked at a federal level. She says a response from the Spiral Scouts’ attorney followed, and no further interaction between the two groups has occurred. At press time, the Boys Scouts had not returned Metro Times’ phone calls."

[NJCubScouter]

...accompanied by a cease-and-desist order that stated that the word “scouts†was trademarked at a federal level. She says a response from the Spiral Scouts’ attorney followed, and no further interaction between the two groups has occurred. 

 

There has to be more (or less) to this story than this.  If by "order" is meant a court order (which is what it usually means), then it means the BSA did sue SpiralScouts.  If that is true, the rest of what is quoted above would mean that, after having filed a lawsuit, asked a judge to issue an order, received the order, served it on the defendant (SpiralScouts, that is), the BSA (or its attorney) got a letter from SpiralScouts attorney and then decided to forget about the whole thing.  Unless the enclosure to that letter was a check in an agreed-upon amount, things just don't work that way.  (And I doubt that is what happened.)  And even if the BSA did decide to forget the whole thing, there still would have had to be some "interaction" between their attorneys.  You don't just leave a pending court case sitting there without getting it wrapped up (to use a non-legal term) in some way.  

[Peregrinator]

I'm sure it was just a cease-and-desist letter and no actual court order was involved. But you're right that it's weird that there doesn't seem to be any follow-up. There are more recent examples of the BSA vigorously defending their "trademarks" (Hacker Scouts, Scouts of St. George).