By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The travel reservation company Booking.com, a unit of Booking Holdings Inc, deserves to be able to trademark its name, the U.S. Supreme Court decided on Tuesday, overruling a federal agency that found it too generic to merit protection. The court decided 8-1 that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was incorrect when it denied the company’s application to trademark the name Booking.com, with the justices finding it distinctive enough that the agency should have approved it.
The court said surveys made clear that consumers understand that Booking.com refers to a particular company, and not online hotel reservation services in general.
“Because ‘Booking.com’ is not a generic name to consumers, it is not generic,” liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the ruling.
In a dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said the court’s majority had put too much emphasis on consumer surveys, which he said were of limited value.
Booking.com, based in…