Suggestive terms may be immediately registerable as trademark, but merely descriptive terms are not (at least not without acquired distinctiveness or secondary meaning). Nautilus Grp., Inc. v. Icon Health & Fitness, Inc., 372 F.3d 1330, 1340 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (noting that a suggestive mark is “considered to be inherently distinctive, and thus automatically qualifies for trademark protection under 15 U.S.C. § 1051”). “[T]here is a thin line of demarcation between a suggestive mark and a merely descriptive one, with the determination of which category a mark falls into frequently being a difficult matter involving a good measure of subjective judgment.” In re Phillips Van Heusen Corp., Ser. No. 75664835, 2002 TTAB LEXIS 45, at *14 (TTAB 2002); see also Nautilus Grp., 372 F.3d at 1340 (“The line between descriptive and suggestive marks can be difficult to draw.”).

Where “two or more merely descriptive terms are combined, the determination of whether the composite also has a merely descriptive significance turns on the question of whether the combination of terms evokes a new and unique commercial impression.” In re Phoseon Tech., Inc., Ser. No. 77963815, 2012 TTAB LEXIS 306, at *3 (TTAB 2012). A mark comprising a combination of merely descriptive components is registrable “if the composite has a bizarre or incongruous meaning as applied to the goods or services,” In re Omniome, Inc., Ser. No. 87661190, 2019 TTAB LEXIS 414, at *12 (TTAB 2019) (citations omitted), or “whose import would not be grasped without some measure of imagination and ‘mental pause.'” In re Shutts, Ser. No. 73245440, 1983 TTAB LEXIS 150, at *6 (TTAB 1983). See also Nautilus Grp., 372 F.3d at 1340 (“A suggestive mark is one for which ‘a consumer must use . . . any type of multistage reasoning to understand the mark's significance . . . .”) (citation omitted). The meaning of each component word may be evaluated separately in the course of evaluating the mark as a whole. DuoProSS Meditech Corp. v. Inviro Med. Devices, Ltd., 695 F.3d 1247, 1253 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (in evaluating descriptiveness, “[t]he Board . . . may ascertain the meaning and weight of each of the components that makes up the mark”). 

The TTAB recently reversed a Section 2(e)(1) refusal and held that the term PHYSICIANCARE was suggestive rather than merely descriptive of "Healthcare business administration services in the nature of providing a website featuring technology allowing user to manage and deliver clinically-relevant communications on behalf of pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to physicians and other healthcare providers ..." because purchasers would have to engage in a multistep analysis of the two component terms, "physician" and "care," to arrive at the alleged descriptive meaning, namely that “applicant's healthcare related software and technology services are for assisting physicians in providing care to patients.” 

The first immediate step is identified by the services in the application, namely, that the “website” and “application programming interface” “deliver[] clinically relevant communications” from “pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers” “to physicians and other healthcare providers.” The physician's review of the communications and any subsequent care provided to a patient occur in a second or third step subsequent to the immediate action provided by Applicant's Identified Services. This type of multi-stage reasoning supports that Applicant's mark is suggestive. 

Also, the applicant had argued that pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers use its website and services to provide messages to healthcare providers who then may use such information to render care to a patient. Thus, its services “provide product information from a pharmaceutical manufacturer to a physician, not to dictate the care provided to a patient” (emphasis in original), such that the applied-for mark PHYSICIANCARE was not merely descriptive of its “technology or software service.” 

The TTAB concluded that, based on the limited record of this ex parte proceeding, the mark PHYSICIANCARE, when considered in relation to the identified services that provide medical and clinical information from pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to physicians in order to provide care for patients, presents a meaning that requires some measure of imagination and mental pause. See also In re Recovery, Inc., Ser. No. 73013798, 1977 TTAB LEXIS 122, at *5 (TTAB 1977) (“to articulate the manner in which the term ‘RECOVERY' describes those services, one cannot come up with an immediate response, but rather must engage in a mental process involving imagination, speculation, and possibly stretching the meaning of the word to fit the situation”).