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Booking.com a well known travel website and travel meta search engine for lodging owned and operated by Booking Holdings INC is in hot water lately with the US Supreme Court!
The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to consider a bid by a federal agency to prevent Booking.com from trademarking the site name. According to the report, " It is too generic to deserve legal protection."
A quick research shows that Booking Holdings INC has filed several trademark applications since they began using it's name globally in 2006. However, in 2016 a tribunal of the Patent and Trademark Office rejected those applications.
Booking.com appealed the decision presenting a survey that showed that 74/% of customers identified Booking.com as a brand!
According to USPTO: "A trademark is generally a word, phrase, symbol, or design, or a combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others." https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BasicFacts.pdf
Basically under U.S. law, only terms that distinguish a particular product or service from others on the market can be trademarked and in my personal opinion Booking.com doesn't meet this criteria. We have seen similar situations in which generic names such as Hotels.com, Lawyers.com, and Mattress.com were tried to be trademarked but the Federal Courts have rejected those trademark applications.
Apparently some companies have the wrong perception that by acquiring a .COM generic world would granted the right to trademark it. However, the Patent and Trademark Office said that the addition of ".com" to a generic word does not render it distinctive!
Complete report can be found here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-booking-hldg-idUSKBN1XI2B6
The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to consider a bid by a federal agency to prevent Booking.com from trademarking the site name. According to the report, " It is too generic to deserve legal protection."
A quick research shows that Booking Holdings INC has filed several trademark applications since they began using it's name globally in 2006. However, in 2016 a tribunal of the Patent and Trademark Office rejected those applications.
Booking.com appealed the decision presenting a survey that showed that 74/% of customers identified Booking.com as a brand!
According to USPTO: "A trademark is generally a word, phrase, symbol, or design, or a combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others." https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BasicFacts.pdf
Basically under U.S. law, only terms that distinguish a particular product or service from others on the market can be trademarked and in my personal opinion Booking.com doesn't meet this criteria. We have seen similar situations in which generic names such as Hotels.com, Lawyers.com, and Mattress.com were tried to be trademarked but the Federal Courts have rejected those trademark applications.
Apparently some companies have the wrong perception that by acquiring a .COM generic world would granted the right to trademark it. However, the Patent and Trademark Office said that the addition of ".com" to a generic word does not render it distinctive!
Complete report can be found here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-booking-hldg-idUSKBN1XI2B6