Of late it has seemed that the trademark office has been willing to grant trademarks on all sorts of generic terms and phrases. Indeed, I wake up every day half expecting to get a cease and desist letter for our use of the phrase “law firm” in our law firm name. Oops, there, I’ve used it again.
According to recent federal court decision reported in thedomains.com, there are some limits. The court recently upheld the trademark office’s denial of a trademark application for “hotels.com” as too generic. More specifically, “the generic term ‘hotels’ did not lose its generic character by placement in the domain name HOTELS.COM,” given that the .com is merely the abbreviation used to indicate a commercial website.
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Hotels.com and getaroom are completely separate companies, connected only because the founders who created and sold hotels.com also founded getaroom.
Right you are, revised accordingly