[20200602]LSB10485_这不是通用的吗：最高法院将考虑使用通用术语的网址是否可以注册商标.pdf

CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress Legal SidebarLegal Sidebari i Isnt It Generic: Supreme Court to Consider Whether Web Addresses Using Generic Terms May Be Trademarked June 2, 2020 What can be trademarked? On May 4, 2020, in its first telephonic oral argument ever, the Supreme Court heard arguments addressing this question. Generally, trademarks protect the goodwill that a company has built in a “distinctive” name or mark. Whether a mark is distinctive can depend on a number of factors, but, under long-standing trademark principles, a “generic” mark is never distinctive and therefore may not be protected under trademark law. A mark is generic if it is the “common name of a product” or “the genus of which the particular product is a species.” For example, one could not trademark the name “LITE BEER for light beer, or CONVENIENT STORE for convenience stores.” B, a hotel reservation company, applied to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) for a trademark on its business name, BOOKING.COM. The PTO denied the application, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Fourth Circuit) held that BOOKING.COM is a protectable mark. In PTO v. B, the