Photo: Photos By Tomas Ovalle / Special To The Chronicle 2016 Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle 2016 Photo: Photos By Tomas Ovalle / Special To The Chronicle

Yosemite National Park recently settled one of the nation’s oddest intellectual property disputes, teaming up with the company that manages the park’s hotels and restaurants to pay the former operator for trademarks the company notoriously claimed were its own.

Turns out, Yosemite got a lot more in the $12 million deal than a few famous place names in the park, like Ahwahnee and Curry Village.

According to newly released legal documents, the global hospitality company Delaware North handed over more than 30 park-related names, designs and logos that it had quietly registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when it operated Yosemite’s visitor facilities.

The relinquished property includes seven images of the iconic Half Dome cliff face, symbols like pine cones and badger paws associated with Yosemite and slogans used for park marketing, such as “Girls on Granite” and “Go Climb a Rock.”

Delaware North also released its right to scores of Yosemite merchandise items, from T-shirts to greeting cards to baseball caps emblazoned with park motifs, as well as its right to seek payment for hundreds of capital improvements it made at Yosemite during the nearly 25 years it managed services there.

The extent of Delaware North’s intellectual property claims was revealed for the first time in last month’s legal settlement. Park officials announced the agreement on July 15, but they withheld the settlement document. The Chronicle obtained the agreement through a Freedom of Information Act request.

As previously reported, Delaware North and the National Park Service agreed to end their long-running legal battle over who owns Yosemite’s intellectual property with the $12 million payment. Under the terms of the outlay, the National Park Service paid $3.8 million to Delaware North to relinquish its claims in the park while Yosemite’s current concessionaire, Aramark, paid $8.2 million.

Photo: Photos By Tomas Ovalle / Special To The Chronicle 2016

Aramark, which took over the concessions operations from Delaware North in 2016, now controls the assets until its contract with Yosemite ends in 2031. Ownership then reverts to the park service.

Independent legal experts who reviewed the settlement said it didn’t appear out of the ordinary for a trademark deal.

“It seems like a fairly run-of-the-mill settlement agreement,” said Kelly McCarthy, a partner at San Francisco law firm Sideman and Bancroft who specializes in intellectual property. “It was clear that the parties wanted to be done with this unpleasantness.”

Officials with the National Park Service also framed the settlement as a way to put the conflict behind them. Although they challenged Delaware North’s ownership of the trademarks, they went to great lengths to change the names of park properties that the former concessionaire claimed the rights to.

When Aramark took over the concessions contract, the Ahwahnee Hotel was renamed the Majestic Yosemite Hotel, Curry Village was called Half Dome Village, and the Wawona Hotel became Big Trees Lodge. Designs and logos on park merchandise were also revised.

The old monikers, some of which date back more than a century, have begun to re-emerge recently in the park.

While the legal settlement forbids Delaware North, as well as Aramark, from speaking with the press about the trademark issue, Buffalo, N.Y.-based Delaware North has long defended its efforts to register the intellectual property at Yosemite. Company officials had maintained that they were forced to buy many of these assets from the prior concessionaire and wanted to protect their investment.

The legal spat began when Delaware North lost its contract to manage Yosemite’s visitor facilities and presented Aramark with a $51 million bill for the intellectual property. Delaware North proceeded to sue the park service for failing to force Aramark to pay up. The park service, meanwhile, challenged Delaware North’s trademark claims at the patent office.

The 109-page legal settlement itemizes the 34 trademarks being released to Aramark — and ultimately the park service. They include the names of such well-known sites as the Ahwahnee Hotel, Curry Village and the Wawona Hotel, as well as the names of lesser-known places like the Mountain Shop, a subtle design of the word Yosemite, the slogan “All U Can Heat” and a sketch of a figure-8 rope.

The agreement also lists dozens of items that the park can now freely sell, including souvenir golf balls, children’s books, spoons and novelty rocks. In addition, the settlement lists hundreds of property upgrades that Delaware North won’t seek further compensation for, including new carpet in employee housing, snowflake decorations at Badger Pass ski area and new drape rods in the Grand Room of the Ahwahnee.

“What it accomplishes ... is the return of what the National Park Service should have owned all along,” said Mel Owen, an attorney at San Francisco firm Owen Wickersham and Erickson who specializes in trademark law. “And the experience, while expensive, should result in the (park) service avoiding such trademark ownership issues with future concessionaires.”

Park service officials have already begun rewriting concessions contracts not only at Yosemite but in parks nationwide to ensure that private companies cannot trademark park assets.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander