Airbnb demands tiny Portland B&B stop using the letters 'bnb'
Airbnb Preventing the Use of BnB
A six-room bed and breakfast on the Isle of Portland is fighting Airbnb over the letters 'bnb'. The guesthouse, bnb-side, was opened in 2024 to fund the local b-side arts festival and now generates almost half of its £250,000 annual turnover. Airbnb has sent three legal letters claiming the name threatens its global brand. b-side argues 'bnb' simply means bed and breakfast, a descriptive term used by 14 other registered UK accommodation companies in the past decade.
It's quite punchy of Airbnb to say they're so well-known that they can monopolise a term that they only incorporated into their name in the first place because it was a descriptive one that everyone immediately understood, and then say that someone else using the term is going to confuse customers and damage them.
- CraigTheGentle
I'm the trade mark attorney quoted in the article.
A lot of comments here are focusing on whether Airbnb can "own" BnB. That's not quite the issue. The interesting question is whether consumers would see "BNB" as indicating commercial origin, or simply as a descriptive abbreviation for bed and breakfast accommodation.
The fact that so many people in this thread immediately interpret it as the latter is one reason I described this as an uphill battle for Airbnb.
- ggm
I wouldn't bet on either side a priori. I know what I want to happen, but the legal process here is perverse.
Failing to defend, failing to adequately resource a defence of even the blindingly obvious can lead to some odd outcomes.
Personally I hope for a pro bono, well structured "piss off, this is stupid" line of reasoning from history. Ask yourself why "AirBnB" chose the 3 letter form in the first place. Thats .. prior art, a generic, or a combination of the two.
(not a lawyer. Hence my doubts this is as straightforward as I personally would like)
- chronolitus
classic case of misaligned CI (corporate intelligence)