What is the difference between trademark infringment and trademark dilution?

Question

When in a trademark dilution case, you dont have to prove likelihood of confusion, but then again isn't that almost what trademark dilution is? For example, the case of toy "r" us and adults "r" us.....that is trademark dilution and likelihood of confusion....is it not?

Answer 1

The link below should help you...

Answer 2

Trademark Dilution Definition

Answer 3

Infringement is where one party infringes upon the trademark rights of another. For example, if you were to open a shoe store & name it Nykey, Nighkee, etc., that would likely be considered an infringement upon Nike ®.

Dilution is typically when a mark is used as a verb rather than a noun. For example, it's improper to say "I'm going to Google that." It should be something like "I'm going to search for that using Google." This is important to trademark owners because they do not want their trademarks to lose their impact in the minds of the public. Did you know that aspirin, zipper, escalator & bikini were trademarks at one time? The owners didn't properly secure their trademarks & those terms became diluted & genericized.

You can read more here: http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-generic-and-genericized-trademarks

Definition of dilution: http://research.lawyers.com/glossary/dilution.html

Definition of infringement: http://research.lawyers.com/glossary/infringement.html

Hope that helps!

Answer 4

Trandemark infringement usually has to do with using an existing
trademark (or something very confusingly similar to it) without proper authorization AND for a product/service that competes with what that trademark is being used for.

Trademark dilution deals more with using an existing trademark
in a way that lessens it uniqueness and most in cases for products or services that DO NOT compete with what that
trademark was originally used for.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

The International Trademark Association has a nice short discussion highlighting the differences.