Home lender Lower LLC, formerly known as Homeside Financial LLC, operates the domain Lower.com. They have filed for the registration of the matching trademark, LOWER.COM.
The mark consists of standard characters, without claim to any particular font style, size, or color. The application was filed with the USPTO offering the following services that utilize the applied for mark:
Financial services, namely, mortgage refinancing; Financing and loan services; Mortgage lending
The domain Lower.com was registered in 1996 and has never been reported as sold. In 2017 it displayed a lander offering it for sale, providing sales comps of similar quality domains. The undisclosed seller also noted that Lend.com was also for sale.
The trademark application for Lower.com lists the mark’s first use occurred “at least as early as 10/26/2018.”
In 2021, Lower raised $100 million dollars in venture capital from the Silicon Valley firm that has invested in fintechs such as GoFundMe and Venmo.
Why was LOWER.COM applied for as a trademark at the USPTO?
It’s an ongoing trend among owners of generic domain names, following the decision by SCOTUS on the Booking.com trademark application.
Since then, dozens of generic domain names have been applied to be registered as trademarks, inclusive of the TLD. We keep track of these applications, and so far none has been decided upon.
As of January 5th, 2021, BOOKING.COM is a registered trademark with the USPTO.
Will these applications become the new norm? Watch this video from NamesCon Online 2020.
I’m not fully up to speed on intellectual property. Hopefully, there’s someone out there that can answer this. They own the trademark for LOWER.COM but display LOWER(TM). Is LOWER protected if the .com is a part of the trademark? We don’t see this with the referenced BOOKING.COM as they have the TM after .com in their name. Though, would BOOKING be protected?
Amplify – Good question. AFAIK the use of (TM) is merely a claim to the mark. The *registration* of the mark will enable them to use the (R) alongside the brand. Which means, they’d have to either change the brand mark as displayed to LOWER.COM(R) or continue with the LOWER(TM) reference.