The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) rejected Booking.com’s trademark application on the grounds that BOOKING.COM is generic. In deciding whether a given “generic.com” term is indeed generic, the Supreme Court, focused on whether consumers “perceive that term as the name of a class or, instead, as a term capable of distinguishing among members of the class.” In holding that “consumers could understand that a given ‘generic.com’ term to describe the corresponding website or to identify the website’s proprietor,” the Court rejected the PTO’s rule that combining a generic term with “.com” yields a generic mark.
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