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Property Law Keyed to Dukeminier
United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V.
Citation:
2020 WL 3518365 (U.S. 6/30/2020)Facts
Booking.com (plaintiff) sought to register the mark “Booking.com,” which is also the domain name of its website, as a federal trademark. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) (defendant) refused registration, arguing that the term “Booking.com” was generic and therefore unregistrable. Trademark registration is governed by the Lanham Act, which requires that the mark be distinctive to make it eligible for federal trademark registration. The distinctiveness of word marks is measured on an increasing scale: (1) generic, (2) descriptive, (3) suggestive, (4) arbitrary, or (5) fanciful. Generic marks are at the lowest end of the distinctiveness scale because the good itself (i.e., “wine”) cannot be distinguished from another producer’s goods. Ultimately, a federal district court reversed the PTO’s decision after finding that Booking.com’s consuming public would find the mark “Booking.com” to be descriptive of its services. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, holding that the combination of a generic suffix like “.com” with a generic term like “booking” is not necessarily generic. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
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