United States Patent And Trademark Office v. Booking.Com B.v.

140 S.Ct. 2298 (2020)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Booking.com (P), a travel-reservation website and company by the same name, sought to register the mark “Booking.com.” A D examining attorney and D’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board concluded that the term “Booking.com” is generic for the services at issue and is therefore unregistrable. T D ruled that “customers would understand the term BOOKING.COM primarily to refer to an online reservation service for travel, tours, and lodgings.” The parties did not dispute that 'booking', is generic for hotel-reservation services. The District Court concluded that “Booking.com”-unlike “booking”-is not generic. The “consuming public,” the court found, “primarily understands that BOOKING.COM does not refer to a genus, rather it is descriptive of services involving ‘booking’ available at that domain name.” The court of appeals affirmed. The appeals court rejected D’s contention that the combination of “.com” with a generic term like “booking” “is necessarily generic.” D appealed.