Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-46_8n59.pdf
Page Number: 7.0

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

5 

Opinion of the Court 

commercial website.  The Board then ruled that “customers 
would  understand  the  term  BOOKING.COM  primarily  to 
refer to an online reservation service for travel, tours, and 
lodgings.”  App. to Pet. for Cert. 164a, 176a.  Alternatively,
the Board held that even if “Booking.com” is descriptive, not
generic,  it  is  unregistrable  because  it  lacks  secondary
meaning.

Booking.com sought review in the U. S. District Court for
the Eastern District of Virginia, invoking a mode of review 
that  allows  Booking.com  to  introduce  evidence  not  pre-
sented to the agency.  See §1071(b).  Relying in significant 
part  on  Booking.com’s  new  evidence  of  consumer  percep-
tion, the District Court concluded that “Booking.com”—un-
like “booking”—is not generic.  The “consuming public,” the
court found, “primarily understands that BOOKING.COM 
does not refer to a genus, rather it is descriptive of services 
involving ‘booking’ available at that domain name.”  Book-
ing.com  B.V.  v.  Matal,  278  F. Supp.  3d  891,  918  (2017).
Having  determined  that  “Booking.com”  is  descriptive,  the 
District  Court  additionally  found  that  the  term  has  ac-
quired secondary meaning as to hotel-reservation services.
For those services, the District Court therefore concluded, 
Booking.com’s marks meet the distinctiveness requirement 
for registration. 

The  PTO  appealed  only  the  District  Court’s  determina-
tion that “Booking.com” is not generic.  Finding no error in
the District Court’s assessment of how consumers perceive
the  term  “Booking.com,”  the  Court  of  Appeals  for  the 
Fourth  Circuit  affirmed  the  court  of  first  instance’s  judg-
ment.    In  so  ruling,  the  appeals  court  rejected  the  PTO’s 
contention  that  the  combination  of  “.com”  with  a  generic 
term like “booking” “is necessarily generic.”  915 F. 3d 171, 
184 (2019).  Dissenting in relevant part, Judge Wynn con-
cluded  that  the  District  Court  mistakenly  presumed  that 
“generic.com” terms are usually descriptive, not generic.