The historic "Camp Curry" name was restored today to the entrance sign at Curry Village in Yosemite National Park after a trademark dispute was settled with Delaware North, Inc./NPS
A years-long trademark dispute that caused Yosemite National Park to rename the historic place names of some of its most popular lodging and dining locations has ended, freeing the National Park Service to restore iconic names such as The Ahwahnee and Curry Village to sites in the park.
The Park Service on Monday announced that DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite, Inc. (Delaware North), a former concessionaire at the park, will transfer trademarks and service marks at issue in the lawsuit to Yosemite Hospitality, LLC (Aramark), the current concessionaire, as part of a settlement that included the U.S. government.
Under Aramark’s Yosemite concession contract with the National Park Service, those trademarks and service marks will transfer at no cost to the National Park Service upon the expiration or termination of Aramark’s contract. The settlement also involves Delaware North’s transfer of various types of tangible assets (not previously purchased by Aramark) to Aramark and the National Park Service. Finally, the settlement provides for payments to Delaware North from Aramark and the United States to resolve any and all contractual disputes among the three parties arising from Delaware North’s departure as a concessioner at Yosemite, and Aramark’s assumption of its Yosemite concession contract.
On Monday, a temporary banner that had covered the name "Camp Curry" at the entrance to Curry Village was removed.
Names that the park changed in 2016 in response to Delaware North's lawsuit included:
- The Ahwahnee became The Majestic Yosemite Hotel
- Curry Village became Half Dome Village
- Yosemite Lodge at the Falls became Yosemite Valley Lodge
- Wawona Hotel became: Big Trees Lodge
- Badger Pass Ski Area became: Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area
"The National Park Service looks forward to the restoration of some of the previous names of the properties at Yosemite, including the Ahwahnee hotel, and the resumed use of other trademarks in connection with concessioner activities at Yosemite," the Park Service said in a release. "Any changes to the current names of properties at Yosemite National Park following this settlement will be based upon a schedule to be determined by Aramark and the National Park Service."
It is expected to take up to several months to restore all signs and other materials.
The issue of trademarking words attached to properties in the National Park System arose in 2014, when the Park Service released a prospectus for a 15-year contract involving lodging and dining concessions at Yosemite. During the process, Delaware North, which had held the concessions business in Yosemite since 1993, notified the Park Service that it owned "intellectual property" rights in the form of trademarks attached to lodgings in the park.
If Delaware North was unsuccessful in bidding for the new contract, the company said at the time, it would seek $51 million to relinquish those marks, and other intellectual property, to the new concessionaire. That led the Park Service to say it would allow a concessionaire other than Delaware North to propose name changes to the facilities, which in some cases have been in operation for more than a century under the same name.
After Delaware North lost the concessions contract, the Buffalo, New York, company filed a $10 million-plus claim against the government. In that claim, DNC alleged breach of contract by the Park Service for its failure to require Yosemite Hospitality, LLC, an Aramark subsidiary that won the contract, to purchase Delaware North's intangible properties.
Yosemite National Park officials, looking to avoid a costly trademark fight with Delaware North, announced in January 2016 that they would change the names of iconic lodges in the park.
Delware North officials quickly fired back, charging the Park Service with "using the beloved names of places in Yosemite National Park as a bargaining chip in a legal dispute between DNCY and the NPS involving basic contract rights."
Yosemite officials said they had no option but to change the names with the transition in concessionaire to Yosemite Hospitality, LLC.
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You want to know my name? I don't feel comfortable posting it to a live message board. I've been a registered user on NPT for over a decade. Kurt knows my full name and location if you're really that curious. I take it you know how to use discretion.
But I don't really blame anyone in the federal government. Yosemite Park & Curry Company (under MCA) and Delaware North registered the trademarks quietly. It's not like they privately told their competitors about this, especially since it would have likely hurt their future bids for other concessions if they had to pay a transfer fee. The USPTO did everything by the book, which was publish the registrations for opposition and nobody at NPS (or who would have tipped off NPS) seemed to notice. But the bulk of these trademark registrations were filed and granted when Gale Norton was Secretary of the Interior and Fran Mainella was NPS Director. I don't necessarily blame them either. This was something novel that was kept quiet for 16 years.
There were 10 Interior Secretaries and 7 NPS Directors from the time that YP&CC filed its first Yosemite trademark registration to the point where Delaware North said "Ahem, we're owed $60 million if you don't renew our contract". Were they all somehow at fault? Any one of them could have handled it early enough to request a trademark cancellation on the basis that it should never have been granted. But that didn't happen. Delaware North had their one shot to use this as a poison pill and they took it. In the end they lost the contract, eventually got $12 million (minus their attorney fees) and know that pulling this kind of stunt in the future is impossible.
This was one heck of a learning experience, like someone finding that something is pretty hot after being burned. NPS certainly got burned in this case, but now they're periodically checking the USPTO database for names of NPS properties. I mentioned that when Xanterra tried it back in 2014, NPS was paying attention and forced them to drop their applications.
https://www.denverpost.com/2015/01/09/park-operator-xanterra-files-trade...
https://www.denverpost.com/2015/05/07/xanterra-drops-efforts-to-trademar...
Agreed, this isn't the "fault" of any single individual or administration. Perhaps rather than waiting for someone else to file and fight it, the NPS should register themselves any names they deem important up front. But in the end, I don't really care about names - as Shakespeare said, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".
During the case with Delaware North, NPS was demanding that the trademarks be cancelled, and absent that be transfered to NPS as the rightful owner.
I actually believe that NPS would have won if they had stuck it out, but the time and cost in terms of federal attorneys probably wasn't worth it. And settling isn't really anything that would embolden similar trademark registrations by concessionaires since it's been shown that NPS will now fight it in front of the USPTO. I believe it's also written into all new NPS concessionaire contracts that they can't do that, and if somehow they have any that they have to revert to NPS without any payment once the contract ends.
There has been at least one case where NPS allowed a concessionaire to register a trademark. There was LeConte Lodge at Great Smoky Mountains NP. I heard the claim was that they were concerned about outside sellers of merchandise with the name of the business, and that they had a requirement to transfer the
I 'spect the original DN contract was drafted during the W administration--maybe Clinton. That contract should have provided for rights in facility names, but almost certainly didn't. Poor drafting. Hasn't changed.
The whole deal was in the works with the NPF as the caretaker and Delaware North the winner of the bid. They took over in 1993 when Clinton was in charge, but I'm not sure which administration drafted the contract. But in the end I'm sure that it was done by career NPS people without any political influence. Again, we can all second guess it, but this was never seen as a concern. None of the contracts before or until Delaware North revealed its poison pill mentioned trademarks. This manueuver will never happen again.
It has nothing to do with who was or is president. The claim to 'intellectual property' by the prior concessionaire to names that have been long standing was as bogus as the boo hoos they sobbed while carefully preparing their bank accounts for the anticipated cash windfall