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

Opinion of the Court 

disserve trademark law’s animating policies.  We disagree.
The PTO’s principal concern is that trademark protection
for  a  term  like  “Booking.com”  would  hinder  competitors. 
But  the  PTO  does  not  assert  that  others  seeking  to  offer 
online hotel-reservation services need to call their services 
“Booking.com.”  Rather, the PTO fears that trademark pro-
tection for “Booking.com” could exclude or inhibit competi-
tors  from  using  the  term  “booking”  or  adopting  domain
names like “ebooking.com” or “hotel-booking.com.”  Brief for 
Petitioners 27–28.  The PTO’s objection, therefore, is not to
exclusive use of “Booking.com” as a mark, but to undue con-
trol  over  similar  language,  i.e.,  “booking,”  that  others 
should remain free to use. 

That concern attends any descriptive mark.  Responsive
to it, trademark law hems in the scope of such marks short
of  denying  trademark  protection  altogether.    Notably,  a
competitor’s use does not infringe a mark unless it is likely 
to  confuse  consumers.  See  §§1114(1),  1125(a)(1)(A);  4 
McCarthy §23:1.50 (collecting state law).  In assessing the 
likelihood of confusion, courts consider the mark’s distinc-
tiveness: “The weaker a mark, the fewer are the junior uses
that will trigger a likelihood of consumer confusion.”  2 id., 
§11:76.  When  a  mark  incorporates  generic  or  highly  de-
scriptive  components,  consumers  are  less  likely  to  think 
that other uses of the common element emanate from the 
mark’s owner.  Ibid.  Similarly, “[i]n a ‘crowded’ field of look-
alike marks” (e.g., hotel names including the word “grand”),
consumers  “may  have  learned  to  carefully  pick  out”  one 
mark from another.  Id., §11:85.  And even where some con-
sumer confusion exists, the doctrine known as classic fair 
use, see id., §11:45, protects from liability anyone who uses 
a descriptive term, “fairly and in good faith” and “otherwise
than  as  a  mark,”  merely  to  describe  her  own  goods.  15 
U. S. C.  §1115(b)(4);  see  KP  Permanent  Make-Up,  Inc.  v. 
Lasting Impression I, Inc., 543 U. S. 111, 122–123 (2004).