domains When is a domain name registerable as a trademark

[Lox]

Dutch company Booking.com is at the centre of one of the world's most important domain name-related legal cases. The US Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) has taken its long-running dispute with Booking.com to the US Supreme Court, claiming that the word 'booking' is too generic to be registered as a trademark. Addition of the '.com' suffix is not sufficient to make a generic term registerable, the USPTO argues.

It's a case with major implications for many internet-based operations, because consumers often firmly associate generic-term-plus-extension combinations with particular companies, as with bol.com, amazon.com and nu.nl.

... What are the implications of the case? If the USPTO's appeal is rejected by the Supreme Court, Booking.com will be able to protect its brand more effectively. The company will be able to take action against anyone else that uses its name, on the grounds of trademark infringement, for example. And that could have repercussions for all the travel sites that use the word 'booking'.

read more (sidn)

 

[Ategy]

Ultimately this is why it's important:
"Wynn added that he was “not convinced” that Booking.com’s competitors that use the word “booking” in their domains will be protected by the “fair use” defense, and that the existence of such a defense will not prevent Booking.com from suing them out of business regardless."

Otherwise I originally thought having a trademark on "Booking.com" was rather meaningless, as it wouldn't affect any business using the term "Booking", because "Booking" and "Booking.com" are very different.

But on the other side, I never thought it could block things like "MyBooking.com". Which if you ask me, would be very problematic for the domain industry if that was the case. Could it also block Booking.co, but then not Booking.net?

Kinda interesting to see what will come of this. I always felt that trademarking a domain was rather pointless specifically because if you own the domain, then nobody else does by default.