U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Booking.com in trademark case

The US Supreme Court decided. in the ‘U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B. V., No. 19-46, 591 U.S.  ___ (2020)’ case.  that generic words coupled with ‘.com’ may be eligible for federal trademark registration as long as consumers do not perceive such words as generic. 

Booking.com, a company providing a travel registration website and app, applied for  trademark registration of ‘Booking.com’. The trademark registration was refused by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), stating that the term was generic and cannot get registered as a trademark. 

The Supreme Court rejected USPTO’s support of the rule that a generic term combined with ‘.com’ or another generic top-level domain is generic, therefore stating that a mark consisting of a generic term combined with ‘.com’ is a ‘generic name for a class of goods or services only if the term has that meaning to consumers’.