Boy Scouts Bully Hacker Scouts Into Submission

b1tbkt writes "Youth-focused Maker organization 'Hacker Scouts' has announced their decision to surrender their name due to bullying by the Boy Scouts of America. It appears that BSA has interpreted their federal charter to include a claim on any and all use of the term 'Scout' in an organization's name. The litmus test for such a claim, so far as I'm aware, is the likelihood of causing confusion. The term 'Scout' is sufficiently generic, though, and by this reasoning most every airline in the world would need to eliminate 'Airlines' from their name."

Comments

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because inspiration is illegal in this country.

Dumb reasoning from Slashdot, per usual

[Legal.Troll]

The clear purpose and intent of using the name "Hacker Scouts" is to borrow on the name recognition of the Boy Scouts. The airlines "example" is dumb on its face for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that there is roughly zero likelihood that anybody would be confused by commercial airlines having the word "airline" in their name. All they need to do is stop using the name that was deliberately chosen to borrow off of the BSA name recognition. This is exactly what they've wisely decided to do. The only sad part is that oceans of dumb nerd tears are being cried due to nerd ignorance. We get it. Techies don't understand legal reasoning or the law. News at 11.

Re:In this case there is merit

[Hognoxious]

For the same reason you could safely make a car called the "Apple" but you would be sued without hesitation if you tried doing anything in the fagster hippot fashion accessory industry with the name of "Apple".

FTFY.