Elena Rodriguez Armenta

is an associate in the Litigation Department. Ms. Rodríguez joined Debevoise in 2018. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2018, with high pro bono distinction and the Deborah L. Rhode Public Interest Award. She received her B.A. magna cum laude from New York University in 2015, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Recent Articles by

Misguided: USPTO Examination Guide Misses the Mark on Booking.com

Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released its long-awaited Examination Guide on so-called generic.coms – domain names comprised of generic elements along with a generic top-level domain (such “gTLDs” include .com, .net, .org, .biz and .info). The Guide (No. 3-20, entitled “Generic Terms after USPTO v. Booking.com”) provides needed guidance to trademark examiners on how to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in USPTO v. Booking.com B. V., 140 S. Ct. 2298 (2020); it also provides guidance to trademark applicants on the standards they can expect the USPTO to apply in considering whether their domain names are registrable as trademarks. Unfortunately, instead of faithfully applying the Supreme Court’s lesson about the importance of consumer perception in assessing whether a term functions as a trademark, the USPTO has relied on factors close to its discredited per se rule that will make it very difficult to register such marks.