Y Combinator Trademark Rejected as Generic

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-tradem...

[2] https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...

The post is shockingly editorial: "Regardless of the ultimate outcome, this trademark dispute is just another embarrassment for a firm that continues to look less like the “Harvard of venture capital” and more like an elaborate and mismanaged funnel for acqui-hires."

I'm not sure what that has to do with an attempt to get a trademark, but it certainly seems like the author has some strong, if unrelated, opinions.

Short and written in a gossipy style. If it weren't YC related, it would have already been flagged to death as not the kind of thing for HN.