Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-46_8n59.pdf
Page Number: 15

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

These  doctrines  guard  against  the  anticompetitive  ef-
fects  the  PTO  identifies,  ensuring  that  registration  of 
“Booking.com” would not yield its holder a monopoly on the 
term “booking.”  Booking.com concedes that “Booking.com”
would be a “weak” mark.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 66.  See also id., 
at 42–43, 55.  The mark is descriptive, Booking.com recog-
nizes, making it “harder . . . to show a likelihood of confu-
sion.”  Id., at 43.  Furthermore, because its mark is one of 
many “similarly worded marks,” Booking.com accepts that
close  variations  are  unlikely  to  infringe.    Id.,  at  66.  And 
Booking.com  acknowledges  that  federal  registration  of
“Booking.com”  would  not  prevent  competitors  from  using 
the word “booking” to describe their own services.   Id., at 
55. 

The PTO also doubts that owners of “generic.com” brands
need trademark protection in addition to existing competi-
tive  advantages.  Booking.com,  the  PTO  argues,  has  al-
ready seized a domain name that no other website can use 
and is easy for consumers to find.  Consumers might enter 
“the word ‘booking’ in a search engine,” the PTO observes, 
or “proceed directly to ‘booking.com’ in the expectation that
[online  hotel-booking]  services  will  be  offered  at  that  ad-
dress.”  Brief  for  Petitioners  32.  Those  competitive  ad-
vantages, however, do not inevitably disqualify a mark from
federal registration.  All descriptive marks are intuitively 
linked to the product or service and thus might be easy for
consumers to find using a search engine or telephone direc-
tory.  The  Lanham  Act  permits  registration  nonetheless.
See §1052(e), (f ).  And the PTO fails to explain how the ex-
clusive connection between a domain name and its owner 
makes the domain name a generic term all should be free 
to use.  That connection makes trademark protection more
appropriate, not less.  See supra, at 9. 

Finally, even if “Booking.com” is generic, the PTO urges, 
unfair-competition  law  could  prevent  others  from  passing
off their services as Booking.com’s.  Cf. Genesee Brewing Co.