Alert
Recommended Alerts
Supreme Court Rules that Adding “.com” to a Generic Term Can Result in a Protectable Mark
In Booking.com v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), the Supreme Court rejected the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (PTO) proposed rule that all marks that combine a generic term with an Internet domain name suffix such as “.com” are per se generic and therefore unprotectable. According to the Court, such a “sweeping” rule is inconsistent with the principles of trademark law, and “generic.com” marks can be protectable if consumers recognize the mark as an identifier of the source of certain goods and/or services.