YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — The National Park Service has opened up a new front in the fight over the names of historic hotels and other beloved landmarks at Yosemite National Park.
The agency has asked a federal trademark board to cancel trademarks obtained by the company that previously ran the park’s hotels, restaurants and outdoor activities, the Sacramento Bee reported Friday (http://bit.ly/1R5Nzye). Those trademarks include the name, “The Ahwahnee,” which was used on a luxurious stone and timber hotel with stunning views of the park’s fabled granite peaks, and “Curry Village,” a woodsy family-friendly lodging complex.
The park’s previous concession company, Delaware North, is demanding the park service pay it $51 million for the names and other intellectual property and has filed a lawsuit in federal court. The park service, meanwhile, changed the names of The Ahwahnee, Curry Village and other sites while it fights for the rights to keep the original names.
Attorneys for the U.S. Department of the Interior told the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board that the trademark registrations were causing “damage and injury” to the National Park Service, according to the Bee.
Attorneys for Delaware North said in a March 14 reply that the effort to cancel its trademarks was “a tactic” in the ongoing litigation. They asked the trademark board not to take any action until the lawsuit was resolved.
Delaware North recently lost a $2 billion bid — the National Park Service’s largest single contract — to run the park’s hotels, restaurants and outdoor activities when Yosemite awarded a 15-year contract to Aramark.
Delaware North has said when it won the contract in 1993, the park service required it to buy the former concessionaire’s assets.
The park service has valued the names and other intellectual property at about $3.5 million.
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Information from: The Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com
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These names should never been allowed to be trademarked in the first place. This fight over the names is all about the merchandise. That’s why I’m trademarking the name “The White House” and “The White House, Washington, DC.” Oh yeah, and these:
Total nonsense How can a private company trademark property of the people of the United States?
Have they no National pride? No soul?
No.
Of course they should be trademarked, or anyone could use them even if they weren’t connected to Yosemite in any way. The problem is that they should be held by the park itself and licensed to the concessionaire rather than held by the concessionaire outright.
A lot more to this story than was printed. In the early 90s the concessionaire contractor was purchased by a foreign based company (Japan I believe) so forced a re-bid. At that time the government wanted to protect the names of the park sites through trademarks. Interior likely didn’t have the cash so the brilliant government workers required the oncoming contractor to trademark the names with the provision that these assets would be sold to the next contractor. Essentially the trademarks pass from contractor to contractor. Do not blame the previous contractor for simply attempting extract value out of assets they own. Your government created this mess.