Booking platform Booking.com is allowed to register the brand name as an official trademark, the Supreme Court of the United States said on Tuesday. This closes the previous negative opinion of the US Patent and Trademark Office.
According to the earlier ruling, Booking.com would be too common a name to grant protection.
The Supreme Court goes against this because consumers could indeed distinguish that the name belongs to a specific company. “Because ‘Booking.com’ is not a general name for consumers, the name is not general,” said Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Under U.S. law, a name can only be registered if it is clearly distinguishable from other products that are also on the market. “General” words that refer to a whole category of products or services – such as “car” or “booking platform” – are not included. In fact, this was what the discussion at Booking.com was about because the name is similar to the description of the service in general.
The Booking.com name has been used worldwide by the company since 2006. In 2011 and 2012, the entrepreneurs applied for a name registration, but those applications were rejected in 2016.
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