The case concerned whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office properly refused federal trademark registration for the term 'Booking.com' on the ground that it was a generic name for online hotel-reservation services. The Supreme Court held that a term formatted as 'generic.com' is ineligible for registration only if consumers actually perceive it as the name of a class of goods or services. The Court reasoned that eligibility under the Lanham Act turns on consumer perception of the term as a whole, and that adding '.com' to a generic word can convey source-identifying meaning because only one entity can use a given domain name. It rejected a proposed per se rule against such combinations, noting that existing doctrines like fair use and likelihood of confusion would prevent undue monopoly effects.
This case involved Evelyn Sineneng-Smith, who was convicted under federal law for encouraging unauthorized aliens to reside in the U.S. for financial gain by filing futile labor certification applications. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals raised a new issue not presented by the parties—whether the statute was unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment—and held it to be so. The Supreme Court decided that the Ninth Circuit abused its discretion by departing from the party presentation principle, which requires courts to decide cases based on issues framed by the litigants rather than introducing new ones. The Court vacated the judgment and remanded for reconsideration of the case as shaped by the parties' arguments.
The case concerned whether a party can appeal a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision to institute inter partes review of a patent when the petition was filed more than one year after the petitioner was sued for infringement, in violation of the time limit in 35 U.S.C. §315(b). The Supreme Court held that 35 U.S.C. §314(d) bars judicial review of the agency's application of that time bar. The core reasoning was that the statute makes the institution decision final and nonappealable, §315(b) directly governs whether review may be instituted, and allowing appeals would undermine the efficiency of the inter partes review process as explained in the Court's prior decision in Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee.
The case involved whether courts could review a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision that a petition for inter partes review of a patent was timely filed under 35 U.S.C. §315(b), despite the one-year limit after an infringement suit. The Supreme Court held that §314(d) makes the agency's application of the §315(b) time bar final and nonappealable. The Court reasoned that the review bar covers questions closely tied to the institution decision, as previously interpreted in Cuozzo, that §315(b) expressly governs institution, and that permitting such appeals would undermine Congress's goal of efficient cancellation of invalid patent claims. It rejected efforts to limit the bar to §314(a) determinations or to reframe the appeal as arising from the final written decision.
The case Shular v. United States concerned whether prior state convictions for cocaine-related offenses qualified as "serious drug offenses" under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), which imposes a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence for felons in possession of firearms with at least three such prior convictions. The Supreme Court held that the ACCA's definition of a serious drug offense requires only that the state offense involve manufacturing, distributing, or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance, without needing to compare it to a generic version of the offense. The Court reasoned that the statutory language using "involving" refers directly to conduct rather than to named offenses, in contrast to the adjacent provision for violent felonies that uses "is" to list specific crimes like burglary. This interpretation was supported by the text, context, and the absence of common nomenclature in state drug laws at the time of enactment.
The case Monasky v. Taglieri involved a dispute under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction regarding whether a child born in Italy to an American mother and Italian father had been wrongfully removed from her country of habitual residence when the mother fled to the United States. The Supreme Court held that a child's habitual residence is determined by the totality of the circumstances specific to the case, rather than requiring an actual agreement between the parents or other categorical rules. The Court reasoned that this fact-driven inquiry, informed by the Convention's text and the practices of other signatory nations, focuses on where the child is at home, considering factors like parental intent and the child's acclimation as relevant but not dispositive. It affirmed the lower courts' determination that Italy was the child's habitual residence and that the child should be returned there.
