As we reported in our July 7, 2020 blog post on the USPTO v. Booking.com B.V decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a proposed mark consisting of the combination of a generic term and a generic top-level domain, like “.com,” is not automatically generic and can be protected as a trademark under certain circumstances. Now, the U.S. Trademark Office has issued an Examination Guide providing guidance on how it intends to apply that ruling to the examination of applications for these types of proposed trademarks.
Examination Guide 3-20 Generic.com Terms after USPTO v. Booking.com October 2020
