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

Opinion of the Court 

(internal  quotation  marks  omitted);  see  §1052(e),  (f ).
Without  secondary  meaning,  descriptive  terms  may  be
eligible only for the supplemental register.  §1091(a).

At  the  lowest  end  of  the  distinctiveness  scale  is  “the 
generic  name  for  the  goods  or  services.”    §§1127,  1064(3), 
1065(4).  The  name  of  the  good  itself  (e.g.,  “wine”)  is
incapable  of  “distinguish[ing]  [one  producer’s  goods]  from 
the goods of others” and is therefore ineligible for registra-
tion.  §1052; see §1091(a).  Indeed, generic terms are ordi-
narily  ineligible  for  protection  as  trademarks  at  all.  See 
Restatement  (Third)  of  Unfair  Competition  §15,  p. 142 
(1993); Otokoyama Co. v. Wine of Japan Import, Inc., 175 
F. 3d  266,  270  (CA2  1999)  (“[E]veryone  may  use  [generic 
terms] to refer to the goods they designate.”). 

B 
Booking.com  is  a  digital  travel  company  that  provides
hotel  reservations  and  other  services  under  the  brand 
“Booking.com,” which is also the domain name of its web-
site.1  Booking.com filed applications to register four marks 
in connection with travel-related services, each with different 
visual features but all containing the term “Booking.com.”2 
Both  a  PTO  examining  attorney  and  the  PTO’s  Trade-
mark  Trial  and  Appeal  Board  concluded  that  the  term
“Booking.com”  is  generic  for  the  services  at  issue  and  is
therefore  unregistrable.  “Booking,”  the  Board  observed, 
means  making  travel  reservations,  and  “.com”  signifies  a 

—————— 

1 A domain name identifies an address on the Internet.  The rightmost 
component of a domain name—“.com” in “Booking.com”—is known as the
top-level  domain.    Domain  names  are  unique;  that  is,  a  given  domain
name is assigned to only one entity at a time. 

2 For simplicity, this opinion uses the term “trademark” to encompass
the  marks  whose  registration  Booking.com  seeks.  Although  Book-
ing.com uses the marks in connection with services, not goods, rendering
the marks “service marks” rather than “trademarks” under 15 U. S. C. 
§1127, that distinction is immaterial to the issue before us.