A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court approved trademark protection for certain generic terms when a “.com” is added to the term.

Currently, the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) is rejecting this holding in a new case ahead of them.

This case is about the South Carolina law firm whose application for trademark registration was the domain name “onlinetrademarkattorneys.com”. That name domain was finally denied.

The decision came after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the USPTO (United States Patent & Trademark Office) against Booking.com.

For its part, the TTAB, ensures that the term in question, did not fulfill the requirements for trademark registration despite the addition of the “.com”.

Since Sausser Summers’ brand, “onlinetrademarkattorneys.com”, does not have the secondary meaning necessary to overcome what he considered the inherently generic nature of the term.

This set of TTAB decisions is that simply adding “.com” to a generic term does not exempt it from its generic nature and therefore qualifies it for trademark protection. The Court’s ruling, the TTAB explained, was not so broad as to suggest this as a way around the generic barrier to registration.