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 sourc

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. 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? Or would you have to call your company "Overhand Ropes"? I admit to being puzzled. [0] Preemptive snark: my money's on the latter also. [1] From http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/generic-trademarks.html http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/generic-tradem... [2] https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/appletmlist.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...