intellectual property Archives - Girl Scout History Project

Girl Scouts Vote on Marijuana

(Updated on February 13, 2023)

From today’s Washington Post:

Today, voters in five states will determine whether or not to decriminalize marijuana use by adults age 21 and older. To date, 37 states and the District of Columbia have passed similar laws. /

The legalization trend has had unintended effects on the Girl Scouts, especially Girl Scout cookies.

Girl Scouts and Marijuana?

Not words you often see in close proximity.

Hand-drawn marijuana leaf on green circle of fabric — A curious Troop’s Own badge from my collection

The Girl Scout cookie program is not a fundraiser, in official Girl Scout materials, but a way to foster entrepreneurialism in young women. Ahead of sales, troops set sales goals, apply for cookie booths (usually assigned by lottery), and create their own decorations, slogans, and signs.

As legal marijuana dispensaries opened across the country, a few Girl Scouts did their research and saw an untapped market.

In 2014, a San Francisco Girl Scout set up a cookie both outside a medical marijuana dispensary and did a booming business. Pre-Covid, a Chicago troop used a similar location. Last year, the pot and cookies combo came from Walled Lake, Michigan. Weekend cookie booths outside the Greenhouse of Walled Lake establishment sold more than 1,000 boxes.

When these news stories began to circulate, GSUSA stepped in. They had no problem with the booth locations. But selling products bearing the Girl Scout name was another matter.

We Don’t Like Those Girl Scout Cookies

Handful of marijuana leaves on green background — Weedist

For many years, “Girl Scout Cookie” has been a popular strain of marijuana. So long as the botanical remained banned, Girl Scout officials chose to ignore the trademark infringement. Any legal action to prevent use of the name would only give publicity to the offending product.

But with legalization, the issue had to be addressed. The increased access to marijuana “edibles” crossed a line. Baked goods are Girl Scout turf. GSUSA released the following statement in 2017:

We were recently made aware of local dispensaries using the Girl Scouts trademarked name, or a variation of our trademarked name, to sell their products. In January, dispensaries in California were issued a cease and desist letter from Girl Scouts of the USA for trademark infringement and have removed the product in violation from their shelves. “Girl Scout Cookies” is a registered trademark dating back to 1936. Our famous cookies are known the world over for their delicious flavor and we do not want the public to be confused by unauthorized products in the marketplace.
Medical Marijuana Inc.

Representatives of the marijuana industry were not alarmed by the cease-and-desist letters. “We knew it was coming,” admitted the executive director of the Magnolia Oakland dispensary.

We come from the grow room, not business college. There’s a learning curve to business practices and we are becoming more sophisticated lately, but it’s something people should’ve known, there’s no excuse.
Debby Goldsberry, Executive Director, Magnolia Oakland Dispensary

This isn’t the first time the Girl Scouts took action regarding marijuana.

Girl Scouts Vote Not to Decriminalize Marijuana

When the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution, enacted in 1971, lowered the minimum voting age from 21 to 18, the Girl Scout program offered initiatives that would help girls to become informed voters. One initiative convened fifty years ago.

Red, white, and blue patch showing the female symbol, American flag, and a smoking pipe. — Petticoats, Pot, Politics Patch

In 1972 the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital sponsored “Petticoats, Pot, and Politics,” a Wider Opportunity (Destination) for Senior Girl Scouts. One hundred girls aged 14-17 from across the country joined 25 girls from Nation’s Capital for two weeks of political debate at Trinity College in Washington, DC.

The local delegates helped design the program, selecting current issues with particular relevance for teens. They passed several bills, including one requiring sex education to be taught in school, but defeated a proposal to decriminalize marijuana, instead calling for possession to be reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Uniformed Girl Scouts meet president's daughter. — Conference chair Beaulah “Boo” Law meets Julie Nixon Eisenhower (Leader Magazine, March 1973).

Teen age Girl Scout reading booklet on "The American Woman" — From Leader Magazine, March 1973

The experience ended with a reception at the White House attended by First Daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower, who declared that she agreed with the girls’ position on marijuana.

Girl Scouts–at the forefront of change.

Two girls hang a wooden sign outside a building — Girls hang a sign at Weston Lodge

The History of Our Own Badges

Regular readers know that I am a HUGE fan of the quirky, obsolete Girl Scout badges known as the Council’s Own. These limited edition badges were designed to add additional topics to the traditional Girl Scouts of the USA badge programs or to highlight resources unique to a particular council.

Their limited production and often very clever designs also have made them highly collectible. But the words “Council’s Own” have become a catch-all phrase randomly applied to a range of unofficial badges, often to increase their selling price.

I’ve fed my addiction by creating a digital archive of these delightful, obscure badges. Since 2014, I have accumulated the name, design, council, and requirements for over 1,500 badges: http://gscobadge.info.

Before including a badge, I have to decide whether or not it meets the definition of a Council’s Own. It can be confusing, because this name is loosely applied to four different programs.

Our Own Troop’s Badge (1958-2010)

The Troop’s Own option was introduced in the 1958 edition of the Intermediate Handbook. The program offered an answer to the many troop scribes who had written to Headquarters with suggestions for new badge topics. There were 12 steps to creating a Troop’s Own, including receiving permission from the program department of the troop’s council. The council approved the topic, but not the actual requirements.

The name of the badge indicated how it was to be earned:

The final requirements and their wording, the badge name, the design, and the actual symbols worn, must be the girls’ own work. While doing all this your leader will help you understand the meaning of badges and what different types of activity should be included.

No other girls in your troop or any other troop can use your work. Even if they choose the same subject, the must create their own requirements and design. It will truly be, “Our Own Badge!”

The topic would be inserted into the badge’s name: Our Troop’s Own Blogging Badge. Troops were asked to submit one badge to Headquarters, but that was for reference only.

Leaders were cautioned to step back and let the girls take charge. “If we do these things for girls, then they must, in all honesty, call the badge ‘Our Own Troop Leader’s badge’!”

The “Our Troop’s Own” program split with the 1963 program reform. Now the gold-bordered blank badge was for Cadettes, and a new green-bordered one was introduced for Juniors. The May 1966 issue of Leader features a lengthy article about a Girl Scout troop in the Sudan that decides to create their own badge to learn more about their host country. (Sadly there is no photo of this badge!)

I’ve included some Troop’s Own in my digital archive, as they are extremely difficult to identify. Sadly, their requirements were often discarded when troops disbanded.

Our Own Council’s Badge (1980-2011)

The Worlds to Explore program of the 1980s added an Our Own Council’s Badge. GSUSA described this program as:

Innovative and educationally sound projects developed by the council, to make use of special topics of interest or unusual opportunities and resources within the council or to utilize the rich opportunities provided by council camps.

These badges were developed by adults; typically council staff. They represented the council as part of the national recognition system and therefore should “be developed by people representing a broad spectrum of the council,” according to 1990 GSUSA guidelines.

Most Council’s Owns focused on a specific topic, but a few were tied to a specific event, such as the 1982 World’s Fair (left) and the eruption of the Mount Saint Helen’s volcano in 1980.

The border colors indicate the year the blank badge was issued, it is not related to the colors of the five worlds. Gold borders were used for COs, green for TOs. When the Worlds program phased out, each age level had one border color for all of their badges, including Troop’s and Council’s Owns.

Make Your Own Badge (2012-2014)

Under the Girl Scout Leadership Experience model, the Our Own options were replaced by a Make Your Own option. The program was discontinued after three years. Members considered the one-off, screen-printed badges to be expensive and unattractive. Plus, they were intended to be for one girl only, but leaders were creating them for entire troops. Guidelines for the program noted:

An important part of the Make Your Own badge is what girls find out about their own learning styles as they created a personalized plan to build a skill. If a girl does a badge designed by another girl, she doesn’t have this chance to learn about herself.

Make Your Owns did not need design or requirement approval from GSUSA, Councils, or even troop leaders. I do not track these in my digital archive.

When a CO Isn’t a CO

Girls and leaders today are demanding badges beyond those offered through GSUSA. Headquarters has responded with Girl’s Choice’ badges, robotics, cybersecurity and more.

But there are still patches available that claim to be a Council’s Own. My archive is intended to document official badges and to help Girl Scouts identify unusual badges. I include a list of known “Not-COs” because future Girl Scouts may be curious about a badge seen on many sashes but does not appear in an official handbook or catalog.

I approach this not as the “badge police,” but as an historian seeking accuracy.

Many pseudo-COs are described as remakes of discontinued Council’s Owns. While providers may redesign the badge, they often recycle requirements developed by other people, presumably without permission or payment. That is little different than putting a new dust jacket on an old book and claiming to be the author.

Similarly, badges developed by individuals are not official, no matter what shape they are. The name “Council’s Own” indicates that its content is council approved. It guarantees that these badges reflect the movement’s high standards and offer substantive, age-appropriate activities.

There Should Be a Patch for That

There are many quality, but unofficial, programs out there, but let’s use correct terminology. These should be patch programs, because they are not Council’s Own badges. Many councils now offer “Council’s Own Patch Programs,” a phrase that just offers more confusion.

Instead of sending me terse, desist messages about the “flood” of telephone calls from leaders seeking to purchase discontinued Council’s Own badges, perhaps councils should take the hint that there is a demand for quality recognitions on these topics. Yes, they could MAKE MONEY by turning these old badges into patch programs.

Some councils have made this change. Many more should consider it.

Put the Boy Back in Scouting

This week Girl Scouts of the USA filed a trademark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts.

Specifically, GSUSA objects to the other organization’s new name, Scouts BSA. Members would be known as “Scouts.” The Boy Scouts embraced this new name following its 2017 decision to admit girls to its ranks.

GSUSA argues that the gender-neutral “Scouts BSA” is confusing. The public might mistakenly believe that the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have merged into a new organization or that the Girl Scouts no longer exist.

According to the complaint (Case 1:18-cv-10287):

BSA does not have the right under either federal or New York law to use terms like SCOUTS or SCOUTING by themselves in connection with services offered to girls, or to rebrand itself as “the Scouts” and thereby falsely communicate to the American public that it is now the organization exclusively associated with leadership development services offered under that mark to girls. Such misconduct will not only cause confusion among the public, damage the goodwill of GSUSA’s GIRL SCOUTS trademarks, and erode its core brand identity, but it will also marginalize the GIRL SCOUTS Movement by causing the public to believe that GSUSA’s extraordinarily successful services are not true or official “Scouting” programs, but niche services with limited utility and appeal.

The Boy Scouts have long clouded the waters by appropriating “scouting” for its online identity. The organization’s URL is http://www.scouting.org, not http://www.boyscouts.org. (Girl Scouts use http://www.girlscouts.org.)

What is a Trademark?

Trademarks are names. Trademark infringement is a form of identity theft. If you discovered someone using your name, you’d tell them to knock it off too.

According to the website Market Business News:

A trademark is a sign or symbol we can use to distinguish our business’ goods or services from those of other enterprises. It is a symbol, word or words legally registered or established by long-term use as representing a company or its product.
Market Business News

Here We Go Again

Girl Scouts of the USA is 106 years old. It has had name disputes with the Boy Scouts for at least 105 years.

For years, BSA Chief James E. West repeatedly threatened to sue the Girl Scouts because our use of the term “sissified” and “trivialized” the word “scout.” In 1924 he even had a lawsuit drawn up, but never filed it.

I recently discovered another identity crisis in the minutes of the January 1978 GSUSA Board of Directors meeting:

“Reports have been received from councils about the use of this term which is confusing to local committees. No meeting has been arranged as yet with the Boy Scout President. The United Way has been inadvertently promoting Scouting/USA and has been made aware of the problem and our position. The Board will be kept informed of any further developments.”

GSUSA Board of Directors meeting minutes, January 1978

In 1977, the Boy Scouts rebranded themselves as “Scouting/USA.” Officials explained that the word “boy” offended minority troops and girls in Explorer posts. They also regarded Scouting/USA as an umbrella term that would encompass Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Explorers. That very same argument has been offered to justify the current Scouts BSA label.

The result was confusion, as indicated by the Board Minutes. The Girl Scouts objected, and the new name faded into obscurity.

Hopefully, this latest round will be settled quickly and amicably as well.

More on Intellectual Property

Trademarks, like copyright and patent, are all forms of intellectual property. Juliette Gordon Low was awarded two patents herself, one for the membership pin and one for a freestanding trash can.

To help teach girls about these concepts, the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital and the US Patent and Trademark Office teamed up in 2012 to create a patch program.

Troops in Nation’s Capital can borrow a program kit to earn the patch. The USPTO
also has information about the program available online.