Photo of Theresa Smith

Theresa Smith is an associate in the Corporate Department and a member of the Sports Law Group. She advises sports leagues and teams on a variety of transactional matters, including acquisitions, league expansions, sponsorship agreements, ownership transfers, financings, and governance.

Theresa earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as community service chair to HL Central, a board member of the Women’s Law Association, and a member of the Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law. While at Harvard, Theresa worked as a legal intern at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, and as a legal extern at the Women’s Tennis Association. Prior to law school, Theresa played competitive tennis on the International Tennis Federation circuit.

Theresa was recently chosen for the 2022 class of Sports Business Journal’s New Voices Under 30.

On May 16, 2017, the Ninth Circuit rejected a petition for cancellation of the GOOGLE trademark based on a “genericide” theory that claimed Google should lose its trademark protection because the word “google” has become synonymous to the public with the term “search the internet.” (See Elliott v. Google, Inc., 2017 WL 2112311 (9th Cir. May 16, 2017)).

Genericide, or a claim of genericness that would allow for cancellation of a trademark, occurs when the public appropriates a trademark and uses it as a generic name for particular types of goods or services irrespective of source. The accusation of genericide is ironic: that because brands have become so popular, consumers simply use their names generically for a type of product, and thus brands should no longer be trademarked.  Such genericide can occur due to a trademark owner’s failure to police the mark, resulting in widespread usage by competitors leading to a perception of genericness among the public.