Board upholds Realtor label

The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board unanimously ruled last week that the terms “Realtor” and “Realtors” are not generic, are not synonymous with real estate agent or real estate agents, and concluded that the petitioner failed to prove otherwise.

Since 1916, when the term Realtor was coined, the word has been recognized as identifying members of the National Assn. of Realtors, which registered the trademarks in 1949 and 1950, soon after a new trademark act went into effect.

The decision was issued in a case involving a challenge brought by Jacob Zimmerman, who registered about 1,900 domain names containing the word “Realtor” in hopes of making money selling the URLs. The challenge was the most recent in a series of unsuccessful challenges to the group’s right to use the terms Realtor and Realtors.