Booking.com v. USPTO
United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V. · 2020 · Supreme Court of the United States
What happened
The Court held that adding ".com" to a generic term can produce a registrable mark where consumers perceive the whole as a brand rather than as a category.
The money
No reliable public figure. This dispute matters for the rule it settled rather than for a damages number, and many trademark matters resolve on confidential terms.
What it means for your business
A generic word plus a domain suffix is not automatically registrable — Booking.com won on consumer-perception evidence, which is expensive to produce. Building on a generic term still starts you from the weakest possible position.