SAN FRANCISCO—Consumers might use “Google” as a verb, but that doesn't mean Google's trademark for its search engine is generic.

That was the holding from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday that found that Google's name for its search engine is protectable under federal trademark laws.

“Even if we assume that the public uses the verb 'google' in a generic and indiscriminate sense, this tells us nothing about how the public primarily understands the word itself, irrespective of its grammatical function, with regard to internet search engines,” wrote Judge Richard Tallman.