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What's In a Name? Booking.com and Consumer Perception Evidence
In the first case in U.S. Supreme Court history argued by telephone, the Court on June 30, 2020 ruled 8-1 in favor of Booking.com B.V. (Booking.com) — one of the world's leading digital travel companies — holding that it could register as a trademark its eponymous domain name BOOKING.COM. USPTO v. Booking.com, No. 19-46 (June 30, 2020).
The Court's decision, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, rejected the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) proposed per se rule that a generic term, when combined with the .com top level domain (i.e., a "generic.com" term), must automatically be deemed generic and is therefore ineligible for trademark protection. Rather, the Court held, whether a term is generic must be determined by reference to consumers' perception. As applied to this case, the Court explained that, whether BOOKING.COM is generic, "turns on whether that term, taken as a whole, signifies to consumers the class of online hotel-reservation services." Because survey and other evidence showed that consumers perceive BOOKING.COM as a brand name, not a generic term, the Court concluded that Booking.com was entitled to its registration.
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