On May 16, 2017, internet search engine and content provider Google Inc. was handed a win by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Elliot v. Google Inc. The court ruled that the GOOGLE trademark had not become a victim of genericide, unlike other now generic terms such as ASPIRIN, CELLOPHANE and THERMOS. A copy of the court’s decision can be found here.

The case was filed by David Elliot and Chris Gillespie, who had registered 763 domain names that combined the word “google” with other specific brand, person or product names. After Google successfully challenged those registrations through the National Arbitration Forum for violations of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, Elliot and Gillespie filed a lawsuit seeking cancellation of two GOOGLE trademark registrations (U.S. Reg. Nos. 2884502 and 2806075) before the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. The district court refused cancellation and granted summary judgment in Google’s favor.