Supreme Court Affirms Validity of ‘Booking.com’ Trademark (1)

A generic word combined with ".com” can create a federally protectable trademark, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in an opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In a case that was the subject of the high court’s first-ever remote oral argument, the Supreme Court affirmed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s ruling that the combination of the generic word “Booking” with the generic top-level domain ".com” could receive federal trademark protection even if “Booking” alone could not.

The decision axed the PTO’s bright-line rule against registering a generic word plus top-level domain combinations, and it opens the ...