Either this was an invalid ruling or I don't understand trademark law.^0 A trademark is generic "when it no longer identifies a particular manufacturer or source of a product."^1 No one's using "Y Combinator" to refer, for example, to 500 Startups.<p>The other thing that pops up is that the company is reusing an existing term. This obviously can't be just "a word or phrase that already exists"; "Apple" is trademarked.^2 "Y combinator" the CS concept is certainly in the computing realm, but it's very different from a company. Is "technology and computing" one category that you can't reuse terms? Could you not, for example, make a rope company named "Overhand", because that's a type of knot?<p>Or would you have to call your company "Overhand Ropes"? I admit to being puzzled.<p>[0] Preemptive snark: my money's on the latter also.<p>[1] From <a href="http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/generic-trademarks.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/generic-tradem...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/appletmlist.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...</a>