SCOTUS debates domain names and trademarks.
There was a spotlight on domain names last week in a place where you wouldn’t expect it: The U.S. Supreme Court. The court heard oral arguments in a dispute over whether or not Booking.com should be able to trademark booking.com. It was fascinating to listen to the court drill both sides in the issue. On today’s show, Internet Commerce Association general counsel Zak Muscovitch and I discuss the hearing and the role the ICA might play in the court’s decision. We also talk about ICANN’s decision to block the sale of .org to a private equity company and what it means for the future of ICANN.
Also: Domain registrations soar, GoDaddy reveals acquisition prices, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine jokes about domains.
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I think trademark rights should be ruled as inherent for domains as there is only one domain booking.com and one owner of such domain. I have some Facebook page using our domain as a name, but there are 2 sides to the coin, we actually own the domain and visitors to it can see which Facebook page is the “real one” and they page actually promotes our website for free.
Great discussion. I look forward to reading the decision in the Booking.com SCOTUS case as well.
It’s ridiculous. If I buy water.com and sell holy water? After awhile, once established, I’m going to have exclusive rights to the word ‘water’? Then no one else can use the term ‘water’ for their product/service?
Something like that?
How is this even an argument?
No, they’d have exclusive rights to water.com, not water, and only in limited circumstances. Did you listen to the episode?
Look, it’s already a rule.
“government’s rule that a generic root term, coupled with ‘Company’ or ‘.com,’ can never be a trademark.”
It’s already written, I read into it. So what, ARE they trying to overturn the law?
I don’t see any motive other than challenging the current rule book.
That or ultimately, what I wrote below.
SO again. Why is it even an argument? It’s already ‘on the books’.
And yes, the USPTO has allowed such things to be trademarked, 1000’s. Still, it’s unlawful.
Just an example of ‘everyone else gets to break the rules’, I should get away with it too.
This could backfire too, to bring scrutiny upon those existing trademarks which were unlawfully accepted.
I feel booking.com is provoked to over-reach in light of nTLDs…like booking.hotels booking.vactions etc.
They sense the competition. They want those domains.
Sad part is many domainers, like ALAN BUILT believe owning a .com gives a right to trademark a VERY generic word.
Shame. To protect your own bias’ to .com, they would sell their soul, apparently.
Again, to ‘hijack’ a generic word, it’s EVERY USE in all marketing, exclusively your own, just by attaching .com to the end, is a ridiculous proposition. .comr’s could only wish. They are focused on themselves. Not the WHOLE picture.
It’s not a brand. It’s a generic word.
As confusing as it is…semantics.
.com is a gTLD. GENERIC Top Level domain
booking is GENERIC
Adding them together might not be generic anymore. It creates a distinguished brand, I’ll agree. But why do they they even NEED a ruling?
No one can have booking.com. They have it. They want bookingss.com and everything like that. You can’t do that. They choose a generic term. They deal with the inherit consequences.
Those consequences? They don’t have right to a generic term.
It’s not the same as apple computer. Apple in relation to computers is a BRAND.
You need common sense. In bookings case, they are trying to hijack a generic term for their exclusive use for an exact use case.
I already proved to myself how ignorant domaining is when it comes to the term ‘brand’ and ‘generic’. Look at this TRAIN WRECK:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/what-is-a-brandable-domain.993623/
If you read that, you’ll see how ridiculous ‘mainstream’ domainers rationalize.
post #23
I wrote, “I am actually trying to help everyone by showing them my point of view, and explaining why their point of view is dangerous. LOL sounds like I shouldn’t even care, but I do.”
Hopefully now you see why their way is dangerous…supreme court, here we are faced with the same ‘mentality’ issue I already pointed out. Dangerous indeed.
Booking.com has no problems with booking.com. They want to go every variant. That’s next. That’s foresight.
You can only go so far applying the domino theory to this case. bookings.com isn’t the same as bookings.net or bookings.online 😉
Not the term but the domain name with the .com or .net or .io etc. 😉
“booking” is a generic term but “booking.com” is not generic because there is nothing generic about it if only one person can own booking.com.
Not sure it would be a good thing. Some years back I emailed their affiliate program about using a 2 word booking.com domain for a lead generation site which would specialise on a particular category of travel booking, but fully using only their affiliate scheme.
In return they sent a mildly threatening response about using any domain that might infringe their own booking,com. I replied saying it’s a generic 2 word term so they can’t stop me building a website on it so long as I wasn’t ripping off their brand without permission. But in this case I had asked permission as was only going to use their own affiliate program. Maybe I misjudged it somewhat. I would also have been happy enough selling the domain to them at wholesale price rather than use it myself, but I guess both sides had burned bridges by that point so I didn’t try.
It’s the same as the company behind cars.com trying to stop say someone using fastcars.com i.e. ludicrous to think that they could…
How else do you stop people from using your domain name and tarnishing its reputation online and offline?