This Name is Your Name: Public Landmarks, Private Trademarks, and Our National Parks

To generations of Americans, Yosemite National Park and its landmarks have symbolized the core democratic ideals of the United States—spaces truly owned by the people and open to all. For those who created our national parks, “[t]he purpose of preserving this land was to cultivate a kind of rare experience [they] saw as endangered by a social world that turned every thing, moment, and human being to profit.” It is striking, then, that Yosemite, one of the nation’s first national parks, has become the focus of a battle over whether our landmarks and their names belong to us all or to a select few. In 2016, several Yosemite National Park landmarks were renamed due to an ongoing trademark dispute between a concessions company and the National Park Service (NPS). At the end of its contract with the park, the departing concessions company demanded compensation for the trademarks to the words “The Ahwahnee,” “Wawona,” “Badger Pass,” “Curry Village,” and perhaps most shockingly, “Yosemite National Park” itself. During its contractual relationship with the NPS—and apparently unbeknownst to NPS administrators—the concessions company filed for and received trademarks for use of these landmark names in hospitality and merchandising contexts. Allowing short-term concessionaires to trademark the names of publicly owned and culturally treasured assets implicates key trademark principles in several ways. The oft-recited aims of trademark law are providing information to the consumer, promoting competition, and avoiding dilution of brands by protecting accrued goodwill. Allowing short-term concessionaires to register national park landmark names conflicts with each of these aims, as this Note explains. A limited contractual relationship fits poorly with the enduring cultural value of well-known landmarks and raises complex questions about business operations and intellectual property in the national park context. This Note contends that principles of trademark law and policy are undermined if federal contractors can establish long term proprietary rights over national park landmark names. To provide a comprehensive picture of the Yosemite case, Part I will further explore the facts surrounding the trademarks and landmarks in question, as well as the contractual relationship between DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, Inc. (DNCY) and the NPS. Part II considers the NPS’s claims for cancellation of the Yosemite-linked trademarks under existing U.S. trademark law. Part III argues that concessionaire registrations are inconsistent with the baseline goals of trademark law. Finally, Part IV suggests that legislation, similar to a statute recently enacted in California, represents a possible solution to the issues surrounding private trademarking of public landmark names. This Note asserts that the purposes of trademark law support taking the names of national parks and landmarks off the bargaining table and out of would-be profiteers’ reach, and that providing our national park landmark names with statutory protection from commercial interests fits perfectly within the American tradition of preserving the parks themselves

The cost of active network management schemes at distribution level

The growth of wind generation in distribution networks is leading to the development of Active Network Management (ANM) strategies. ANM systems aim to increase the capacity of renewable and distributed generation (DG) that can connect to the network. In addition to DG, ANM schemes can also include storage devices and Demand Side Management (DSM) strategies. Currently ANM schemes are mainly part of network research and development programmes, funded through network innovation schemes. In future, ANM schemes will need to cover the costs of establishing such a scheme through payments from the network owners and the users of the network. This paper discusses the current charging arrangements which account for network upgrades and the access arrangements for wind farms connecting to networks which are close to capacity. The Orkney ANM scheme is used as a case study, where the costs of the implemented ANM scheme are compared to conventional network upgrades. In order to run ANM as a ‘business as usual’ case, there must be a way in which to recover the costs incurred in implementing and operating an ANM scheme on the network. These costs could be recovered through Use of System (UoS) charging, and there is an opportunity for domestic customers participating in an ANM scheme (through Demand Side Management, for example) to further reduce electricity bills by providing ancillary services to the network. ANM may increase the cost of electricity for domestic customers, however this increase can be considered substantially less than the cost incurred for significant network upgrades

Techno-economic comparison of operational aspects for direct drive and gearbox-driven wind turbines

The majority of wind turbines currently in operation have the conventional Danish concept design-that is, the three-bladed rotor of such turbines is indirectly coupled with an electrical generator via a gearbox. Recent technological developments have enabled direct drive wind turbines to become economically feasible. Potentially, direct drive wind turbines may enjoy higher levels of availability due to the removal of the gearbox from the design. However, this is only a theory: so far not substantiated by detailed analytic calculation. By providing such a calculation, this paper enables us to quantitatively evaluate technical and economic merits of direct drive and gearbox-driven wind turbines

Quantification of over-speed risk in wind turbine fleets

The effective life management of large and diverse fleets of wind turbines is a new problem facing power system utilities. More specifically, the minimization of over-speed risk is of high importance due to the related impacts of possible loss of life and economic implications of over-speed, such as a loss of containment event. Meeting the goal of risk minimization is complicated by the large range of turbine types present in a typical fleet. These turbines may have different pitch systems, over-speed detection systems and also different levels of functional redundancy, implying different levels of risk. The purpose of this work is to carry out a quantitative comparison of over-speed risk in different turbine configurations, using a Markov process to model detection of faults and repair actions. In the medium-long term, the risk associated with different assets can used as a decision making aid. For example if the operator is a utility, it may want to avoid purchasing high risk sites in the future, or may need to develop mitigation strategies for turbines at high risk of over speed

Towards quantification of condition monitoring benefit for wind turbine generators

Condition monitoring systems are increasingly installed in wind turbine generators with the goal of providing component-specific information to the wind farm operator and hence increase equipment availability through maintenance and operating actions based on this information. In some cases, however, the economic benefits of such systems are unclear. A quantitative measure of these benefits may therefore be of value to utilities and O&M groups involved in planning and operating wind farm installations. The development of a probabilistic model based on discrete-time Markov Chain solved via Monte Carlo methods to meet these requirements is illustrated. Potential value is demonstrated through case study simulations

Network reinforcement requirements for Scotland and the rest of the UK (RUK) - and possible solutions for this

A novel multi-objective transmission expansion planning (MOTEP) tool has been developed to analyse, on a comprehensive geographical scale, the reinforcements required to a base case electrical transmission network following application of a chosen future energy scenario, and to generate optimal network expansion plans, designed to alleviate these areas of strain, for a range of crucial network planning objectives. Here, we report the application of the MOTEP tool to a base case predicted 2014 GB transmission network (thereby including already planned reinforcements such as the Beauly to Denny line) under heavy strain from three 2020 energy scenarios developed by the two-region UK MARKAL energy system model. Reinforcement requirements for Scotland and the RUK beyond 2014, along with optimal network expansion plan options, are examined