Yosemite Place Names Restored

[Chuckanut]

Good news. The historical names of famous places in Yosemite NP are going back to the NPS.

https://www.sierrastar.com/news/local/article232692337.html

“ Yosemite National Park will get the historic names of its properties back in a civil lawsuit settlement reached between the National Park Service and Yosemite’s former concessionaire, DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite. “

“The Park Service has put in protections to ensure other parks don’t run into a similar trademark issue in the future.

“Although this settlement is just in Yosemite now,” Gediman said, “when new contracts are being given, the National Park Service has revised the language for new concessionaire contracts” to include protections for intellectual property.“

 

[Ronstar]

^ Excellent!

 

[audreyh1]

I guess I missed this controversy.

 

[JoeWras]

I guess I missed this controversy.

In short (hopefully I have this right):

• The Currys were original concessionaires (early 20th century) and came up with the names, including "Curry Village"
• The concession eventually morphed to some corporate entity called Deleware North (90s?)
• DN lost contract to Aramark in 2014
• Upon vacating and transitioning to Aramark, they changed the names and "kept" the old names, presumably to license them for goods. Names were primarily associated with the lodging and concession operated areas.
• People were upset. NPS was upset. Lawsuits followed.
• Lawsuit now settled between the 3 parties: DN, Aramark, NPS. Includes a few million in payments in the settlement
• Names return and belong "to the people"
• NPS making sure new future contracts clarify intellectual property ownership and transfer at all parks

Shorter version: there's money in those names

 

[Crabby Mike]

This was all news to me too, so I just waded through several articles, none of which gave a clear history. But from what I gather, Delaware North took the step of registering copyrights for the place names, which it had never occurred to the NPS to do (and why would it?).


I hope they never get another park concession anywhere.

 

[Chuckanut]

This was all news to me too, so I just waded through several articles, none of which gave a clear history. But from what I gather, Delaware North took the step of registering copyrights for the place names, which it had never occurred to the NPS to do (and why would it?).


I hope they never get another park concession anywhere.

IMHO, it showed a disregard for the history of the place and the people who value the National Parks. I would no longer do business with people who hold those values.

 

[Animorph]

I'm glad they fixed it. I'm still a couple names behind on a local hardware store. It was rather naive of the NPS, but I guess it came out all right.

 

[cathy63]

In short (hopefully I have this right):

• The Currys were original concessionaires (early 20th century) and came up with the names, including "Curry Village"
• The concession eventually morphed to some corporate entity called Deleware North (90s?)
• DN lost contract to Aramark in 2014
• Upon vacating and transitioning to Aramark, they changed the names and "kept" the old names, presumably to license them for goods. Names were primarily associated with the lodging and concession operated areas.
• People were upset. NPS was upset. Lawsuits followed.
• Lawsuit now settled between the 3 parties: DN, Aramark, NPS. Includes a few million in payments in the settlement
• Names return and belong "to the people"
• NPS making sure new future contracts clarify intellectual property ownership and transfer at all parks

Shorter version: there's money in those names

I believe the names should belong to the park and to the American people. Just to give more of the story as I understand it from having followed it for the past several years --

When Delaware North was awarded the Yosemite concession in the early 1990s, one of the terms of the award was that they had to buy the assets of The Curry Company that related to Yosemite. Curry had held the concession since it was first awarded and had been doing business in the park for over a century by then. In addition to the buildings that the Currys had constructed, they also owned trademarks on some of the names they had given to places in the park, including Ahwahnee. Delaware North paid Curry Co for both their real and intellectual property. The real property was deeded to the NPS as specified in the contract, but no such specification was made with regard to the IP, so it was simply transferred to DN's ownership. During the course of their concession, DN also obtained additional trademarks on other names used throughout the park.

When DN eventually lost the concession to Aramark in 2014, DN valued their trademarks at over $50M while NPS valued them at around $3M. Aramark was caught in the middle as their contract also required them to purchase assets from their predecessor. It was NPS that changed the names while the lawsuits proceeded so that they wouldn't be liable for using (or allowing Aramark to use) someone else's registered trademarks. Now that the lawsuits have been resolved, and the NPS and Aramark will pay more than they wanted to, but a lot less than DN wanted, the original names have been restored.

Overall, I blame the NPS for not handling the IP properly during the 1990s contract with DN. It's not like trademarks were a new thing then, and the government lawyers really dropped the ball in allowing DN to retain ownership of them. That's the root cause of this whole problem, though I also blame DN for taking unfair advantage of this failure on the government's part.

 

[JoeWras]

Overall, I blame the NPS for not handling the IP properly during the 1990s contract with DN. It's not like trademarks were a new thing then, and the government lawyers really dropped the ball in allowing DN to retain ownership of them. That's the root cause of this whole problem, though I also blame DN for taking unfair advantage of this failure on the government's part.

Thanks for the further detail.

Yes, by the 90s, just about every school kid knew about the issues with names like Kleenex, Xerox and Aspirin. It was probably a naive trust issue with the contract and was never run by the right people.