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8  PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE v. BOOKING.COM B. V. 

Opinion of the Court 

like “.com,” the resulting combination is generic.  In other 
words, every “generic.com” term is generic according to the 
PTO, absent exceptional circumstances.4 

The  PTO’s  own  past  practice  appears  to  reflect  no  such 
comprehensive rule.  See, e.g., Trademark Registration No.
3,601,346 (“ART.COM” on principal register for, inter alia, 
“[o]nline retail store services” offering “art prints, original 
art, [and] art reproductions”); Trademark Registration No. 
2,580,467  (“DATING.COM”  on  supplemental  register  for
“dating services”).  Existing registrations inconsistent with
the rule the PTO now advances would be at risk of cancel-
lation  if  the  PTO’s  current  view  were  to  prevail.    See 
§1064(3).  We decline to adopt a rule essentially excluding 
registration  of  “generic.com”  marks.    As  explained  below,
we discern no support for the PTO’s current view in trade-
mark law or policy. 

A 
The  PTO  urges  that  the  exclusionary  rule  it  advocates
follows from a common-law principle, applied in Goodyear’s 
India Rubber Glove Mfg. Co. v. Goodyear Rubber Co., 128 
U. S. 598 (1888), that a generic corporate designation added 
to a generic term does not confer trademark eligibility.  In 
Goodyear, a decision predating the Lanham Act, this Court 
held that “Goodyear Rubber Company” was not “capable of
exclusive appropriation.”  Id., at 602.  Standing alone, the 
term  “Goodyear  Rubber”  could  not  serve  as  a  trademark 
because it referred, in those days, to “well-known classes of 
goods  produced  by  the  process  known  as  Goodyear’s 
invention.” 
Ibid.    “[A]ddition  of  the  word  ‘Company’ ” 
supplied  no  protectable  meaning,  the  Court  concluded, 

—————— 

4 The PTO notes only one possible exception: Sometimes adding a ge-
neric term to a generic top-level domain results in wordplay (for example,
“tennis.net”).  That special case, the PTO acknowledges, is not presented 
here and does not affect our analysis.  See Brief for Petitioners 25, n. 6; 
Tr. of Oral Arg. 25–26.