On December 4, 2019, Sarah Brooks and Adam Kwon published "The US Patent Office Has Booked a Trip to the Supreme Court" in the Daily Journal. The following is an excerpt:
The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari on a petition filed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to review whether BOOKING.COM is a registered trademark. The PTO is challenging Booking.com's trademark application on the grounds that the mark is generic as applied to travel booking services. The court's decision will be instructive in the protection of domain names going forward. The question is whether two generic terms – "booking" and ".com" – are distinctive when added together as "booking.com." Answering this question will require the court to balance policy considerations that fundamentally shape trademark law – such as whether an applicant should be rewarded with a registered mark when it chooses a generic term that will drive potential customers to its website.