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Business Planning Keyed to Reed
United States PTO v. Booking.com B.V.
Citation:
140 S. Ct. 2298 (2020)Facts
Booking.com is a digital travel company that provides hotel reservations and other services through its website “Booking.com.” The company filed applications to register four marks in connection with travel-related services, each containing the term “Booking.com.” The USPTO refused registration, concluding that “booking” means making travel reservations, and “.com” signifies a commercial website, making the combined term generic for online hotel-reservation services. Booking.com sought judicial review, introducing new evidence of consumer perception. The District Court found that consumers do not perceive “Booking.com” as a generic term but rather as a descriptive term that has acquired secondary meaning for hotel-reservation services. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, rejecting the USPTO’s contention that combining a generic term with “.com” necessarily results in a generic composite term.
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