In USPTO v. Booking.com, the Supreme Court held a term styled "generic.com" can be federally registered as a mark if evidence supports that consumers consider the term to not mean a generic name of a class of goods or services.
Booking.com provides travel-reservation services and sought federal registration of the domain name: "Booking.com." The USPTO refused registration because it considered it a generic name for online hotel-reservation services. The courts below the Supreme Court sided with Booking.com.
It should be noted, the Supreme Court expressly rejected the USPTO's argument for a per se rule when a generic term (e.g., booking) is combined with an Internet-domain name suffix like “.com,” the resulting combination remains generic. Thus, we may see trademark surveys being filed in support of domain names.
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