Court Is In Session

I listened to oral arguments at the Supreme Court for a while this morning. (I’m referring to the Supreme Court of the United States.) The arguments were about whether adding “.com” to a generic word such as “booking” would make the combination (booking.com) non-generic and therefore trademarkable. It’s hard to believe, but there really are people who get their panties in a twist over that kind of thing. They’re called lawyers, and the really good ones are paid very big bucks.

The legal shootout was a dispute between the Patent & Trademark Office versus BOOKING.COM B.V. I don’t know what B.V. stands for, but I’ll guess that it’s Besloten Vennootschap, which is the Dutch and Belgium version of a private limited liability company.

But back to the Court. Did you know there are only 50 seats in the Supreme Court that are allocated to the public? Not that it matters at the moment. The Court building is currently closed to the public because of Covid-19. In ordinary times, the line to enter the Court building forms early. But you can hire someone to stand in line for you! Standing in line for people is an actual industry in Washington, D.C. I didn’t have to stand in line, because this Supreme Court session was different from all previous sessions. This one was the first-ever Supreme Court session to be broadcast over the Internet. Lawyers and judges were connected by phone. (I suppose video conferencing is too high-tech for the Court.)

So, out of curiosity, I listened for a while. It was deadly dull.

D-e-a-d-l-y.  D-u-l-l.

However, if you so choose, you can listen to those oral arguments. Audio files will be available on the Supreme Court’s website. Today’s session is the first to be made available.

Before publishing this article, I decided to go to booking.com and see what I could learn about B.V. and Booking’s country of origin. Quoting from their home page, “Booking.com B.V. is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.” People from the Netherlands are called Dutch. Dutch is the language spoken in the Netherlands. So my guess was correct and B.V. stands for Besloten Vennootschap. Private company. A minor mystery is solved. Now I can publish.