Isn’t changing the names the opposite of caving in to DNC? Caving in would be the Parks Service or incoming concessionaire agreeing to buy the trademarks. Instead, they’re telling DNC “Fuck you, those places aren’t even called that any more, so your trademarks are worthless.”
It’s like having a trademark for the Gulf + Western Building and trying to sell merch to people visiting the Trump International.
I believe the concessionaire offered to let them keep using the names while it was cleared in court, but because the new concessionaire is not going to buy the IP regardless the outcome, I think they went with “just change the names now.”
My guess would be the NPS painted itself into a corner at some point.
I was going to write, “fuck that”, but I relent to your wisdom in the matter–it is a fantastical place to stay…in a fantastical place. That said, my buddy and I drove up to Yosemite one weekend to do some camping, and while it was quite cold (and a little bear-y), he slept in the truck, whereas I took my sleeping bag into a small clearing in the woods near our campsite. And with the clear skies that night, I had an unexpected and utterly astonishing view of the meteor shower going on all night. Didn’t get hardly a wink of sleep, but hot damn it was worth it.
All of which is to say that the lodges in national parks are great and certainly worth a visit, but if you don’t mind humping a pack, Yosemite’s one of the best parks I’ve had the pleasure of traipsing through. And specifically, the John Muir Trail, which is around 110 miles of epic landscape and wilderness.
Correct, so long as the grounds are allowed under the statute.
You can if you want, but as no point was made you really don’t have to. Now if you had wanted to be an ass AND include what you have contributed, that’d been shakes with most of this place, But you decided to ONLY contribute and even be conciliatory to one that was ONLY an ass. You’re jake, the other, less so.
Cupcakes, Reindeer, seriously, joking, no serious, no, joking.
Actually…
The Ahwahnee Hotel was completed in 1927. Yosemite Park and Curry Company President Donald Tresidder envisioned a Yuletide celebration in the new Hotel’s Dining Room. He hired Garnet Holme, a California pageant director, to create an “event,” and The Bracebridge Dinner took its initial form, a performance loosely based on Washington Irving’s sketchbook “A Christmas at Bracebridge Hall.” Tresidder and his wife, Mary Curry Tresidder, played the parts of Squire and Lady Bracebridge.
Holmes’ untimely death in 1929 left a void in the direction of this new festivity. A cast member of the first two seasons – a part-time Valley resident who had played the part of The Lord of Misrule – was asked by Tresidder to take on the task of reworking the event. This cast member was Ansel Adams, who was well on his way at that time to becoming one of the world’s finest photographers. Adams did a brilliant job of creating the basic form of the pageant as we know it today. His original script of the “new” Bracebridge Dinner has remained largely intact since the initial performance in 1929. A fine pianist as well as a photographer, Adams’ knowledge of music evidenced itself in the meter of the script, which was written with a feeling of four beats per line to reflect the music chosen for the male chorus processions.
The reality here is this is not about corrupt businesses or a wildly out of control USPTO but lawyers cooking the game to generate more legal fees.
They have purposefully corrupted the USPTO in order to generate as many civil suits as possible ie approve everything, so what, they can sort it out in court. This is not by accident but has been on on purpose with political plants into the USPTO by lobbyists who have purposeful set policy in order to achieve this.
Basic trademark law (disclaimer - IAAL):
The company cannot trademark the term “Yosemite,” used in any context. Yosemite is a term that people use to identify the place, which is owned by the federal government - not the services offered by this company. Same with the term Space Shuttle Atlantis.
The company can claim ownership of specific trademarks that it used to identify its particular services, but that’s a much narrower and more limited option. For instance, the term “Ahwahnee Hotel” might not have much meaning to the average person outside of the company’s specific hotel at Yosemite. However, it cannot trademark generic terms like “Yosemite Lodge,” which generically describes a hotel at Yosemite. (Trademarks have been similarly denied for claims like “Lite Beer,” as a generic descriptor of a low-calorie beer.)
Let’s look at the specific “Yosemite” trademarks that were issued to this company. Searching the Trademark Office database for “Yosemite,” we find:
Yosemite National Park. This trademark was not for the general term, but for a very specific logo. How specific? Here’s what the trademark reads: “NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE ‘YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK’ APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN. The color(s) dark green and light green is/are claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of the word ‘YOSEMITE’ in dark green above the words ‘NATIONAL PARK’ in light green with two light green lines on each side with dark green and light green outline of mountains at the top of the word ‘YOSEMITE’.” Check out the web page for the actual logo that’s protected: it’s a very specific artistic representation, and if you change any one of those features (or even another specific feature that’s not listed here), you don’t infringe the trademark.
“Yosemite” … same as above: “NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE “YOSEMITE” APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN. Color is not claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of the word “YOSEMITE” set against a contrasting background, with a logo of a mountain contained within a circle above.” Again, it’s the specific logo shown in this web page. Any minor change to the logo - even just the font - will take it outside the scope of the trademark. Moreover, if the federal government wanted, it could challenge this trademark as too broad and generic a description of the location.
Variations on “Yosemite Hospitality” and “Yosemite Hospitality, LLC”. Even those are not limited to any description of “Yosemite” and “hospitality,” but to very specific markets like: “Clothing, namely, T-shirts, shirts, ties, sweat shirts, jackets, shorts, pants, hats, visors, caps, gloves, sweaters, coats, scarves, skirts, aprons, suspenders, belts, underwear and socks.” This is like selling T-shirts with your drawing of Barack Obama and attaching a label identifying your company as “Barack Novelty Goods, LLC” … you’re not claiming to be the only source of Barack Obama goods, or the exclusive right to sell any such goods: it’s just the name of your company in that particular market, used to identify you as the source of this particular T-shirt. Think anti-counterfeiting.
And… that’s it. Not so controversial after all.
This exact type of misunderstanding of intellectual property law is extremely common. Probably 95% of the time I see a story like “company (x) claims ownership of absurdly broad concept (y),” like “the concept of rounded rectangles,” I look into the topic (viewed through my understanding of intellectual property law) and easily find that the incident has been hyperinflated to gin up a story, and that the reality is much narrower and quite unremarkable.
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office certainly does make mistakes, as does every institution - but it’s nowhere near as frequent or as outrageous as most people have been led to believe.
Exactly. During the Reagan Administration, Secretary of Interior James Watt was on board with a lot of privatization. Disney had been actively trying to turn Mineral King into some type of ski resort. I think if Watt could have sold all the national parks, he would have.
Yosemite Curry Company, which owned and ran the concessions prior to this company, had a dubious reputation among the seasonal workers, so it’s hard for me to believe it could be worse. But I guess this concessionnaire outdid itself.
OK fine-- Yosemite National Park has had its fair share of kitsch, and while John Muir might well have disdained it all, Ansel Adams appears to have embraced at least some of it.
Remember what distances were like back then and it becomes s community tradition, not an NPS fundraiser.
Isn’t there supposed to be a rule that you can’t trademark simple descriptive terms… So you can’t trademark “blue car” and prevent anybody else from saying that they’re selling a blue car.
I reject the concept of a “ledger of ownership for these particular words” or any words for that matter.
On the grounds that the purpose of trademarks isn’t to protect a company’s bottom line through an artificial monopoly, but to ensure the accurate information of customers, thus the company’s relationship with them. That’s why a trademark doesn’t have a set duration of validity: it’s potentially perpetual. That’s also why a trademark can be invalidated if it’s fallen out of use for a long enough time: as long as it doesn’t create confusion for customers, it’s okay to reuse an obsolete brand, for example.
Registering a trademark that’s been on uninterrupted use, in the place of its original user, is a breach of how trademarks are supposed to work.
I’ll add that trademarks, patents, and copyright work quite differently. Filing, while convenient for procedural reasons, is necessary for neither trademarks nor copyright. Patents are different, as their general purpose is to create a disincentive for trade secrets, by granting exclusive rights limited in time in exchange for complete disclosure. As a result, design patents are a corruption (among others) of the system, since there’s nothing in a design to be disclosed: it’s right there for anyone to perceive. It’s more pertinent to see it as a matter of trademarks, in fact.
In seems like there “should” be a social cost to being such a late-stage capitalist asshole.
Should not other localities shun DNC and decline to grant them contracts, with the knowledge that, if they did let them in, they’d proceed to start name-claiming every concession they are given access to?
Should not the public, once they are aware of it, shun places administered by DNC?
