(Warning: the following is more legalese in plain English than anything else, so if this isn't your cup of tea, skip this post).
Markshor is sort of right, but got some of the details wrong. DNC didn't patent anything. Patents protect inventions and are limited in duration to 20 years (plus sometimes extensions for Patent Office or FDA delays) - not relevant to DNC's (or now Aramark's) operations in Yosemite.
What DNC did was register
trademarks on some famous place names in Yosemite. It doesn't cost a lot of money to register or renew a trademark - when you're doing tens of millions of dollars a year like DNC was doing in Yosemite, TM registration and maintenance is a drop in the bucket. And unlike patents, trademarks can theoretically be renewed forever, as long as the goods or services with which the mark is associated are still being sold/provided and the owner pays the renewal fee every 10 years or so. Hence, for example, in 2002 DNC registered "
The Ahwahnee" in connection with "non-electric iron candelabras; dishes; namely cups, plates, and bowls; blanket throws; hats, golf shirts, denim shirts", and DNC asserts it's also the owner of a much earlier registration of "
The Ahwahnee" in connection with "hotel and restaurant services".
Why would DNC have done this? As Markshor notes, TM registration allowed DNC to prevent others from selling, say, t-shirts that said "The Ahwahnee" on them.
But when it comes to operating hotels within the park, no one's going to operate another hotel called the Ahwahnee, or Yosemite Lodge, or the Wawana Hotel, because such things are controlled by the Park Service. So the value of TM registration there is minimal. And this points to the obvious problem with DNC's assertion of ownership rights for those marks: DNC doesn't actually own the Ahwahnee Hotel, or Yosemite Lodge, or the Wawona Hotel, and the Patent & Trademark Office should never have allowed DNC to register those marks in its own name.
There is now a lawsuit going on, in the Court of Federal Claims, in which DNC asserts that when it took over the concession at Yosemite in the late 1980's it gained ownership of the existing trademarks, and that it is the rightful owner of the marks it subsequently registered, and that those marks are worth over
$60 million, and that either the NPS or Aramark needs to compensate it for that. Yeahright. If ever there was an example of the maxim "location, location, location", this it. No one's going to stay at a hotel in Peoria just because it's named the Yosemite Lodge, and people would still stay at the Yosemite Lodge in Yosemite Valley even it were to be renamed, say, The Mosquito Lodge, because it's in the Valley and there are limited number of room available there.
The lawsuit is taking its time; filed in 2015, discovery is now only set to close in September 2019. Who knows if and when this will ever go to trial.
Like many people in this forum, I think DNC did a better job running concessions that Aramark has; and even if we grant that Aramark's tenure has been beset by a cancelled ski season followed by record snow in 2016-2017, resulting in the late or non-opening of some areas in summer 2017, and then horrible fires in the summer of 2018, it doesn't seem like Aramark, a company previously known for running concessions at sports venues, is really interested in getting this national park concession thing right.
On the other hand, DNC's assertion of ownership over marks it's not entitled to has really turned me off to DNC. If it would drop this stupid lawsuit, I'd write a letter to the NPS urging that Aramark's contract not be renewed and that the contract be given back to DNC.