{"id":34129,"date":"2008-03-26T16:35:41","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T21:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/uncategorized\/new-law-extends-protection-to-famous-trademarks.html"},"modified":"2008-03-26T16:35:41","modified_gmt":"2008-03-26T21:35:41","slug":"new-law-extends-protection-to-famous-trademarks","status":"publish","type":"corporate","link":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/intellectual-property\/new-law-extends-protection-to-famous-trademarks.html","title":{"rendered":"New Law Extends Protection to “Famous” Trademarks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On January 16, President Clinton signed The Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995, which extends protection to "famous" trademarks beyond traditional trademark infringement protection. Normally, a plaintiff must show that it is likely that consumers will be confused as to the source of products by the use of an identical or similar mark by a second party. This usually means that the products on which the second party uses the similar mark are related to the plaintiff's products. Under the new law, the use of well-known trademarks by second parties on unrelated products (e.g.,<\/em> POLAROID on soup) can be enjoined even without a showing of likelihood of confusion. The theory is that such unauthorized use, even though it may not generate confusion, dilutes the distinctiveness of the trademark. The law federalizes and modifies a theory of relief which, until now, had only been available in about half of the states. A federal trademark registration is not required in order to assert the new law. We will provide more extensive information on this new law in our next Intellectual Property Report.<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 16, President Clinton signed The Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995, which extends protection to “famous” trademarks beyond traditional trademark infringement protection. Normally, a plaintiff must show that it is likely that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_stopmodifiedupdate":true,"_modified_date":"","_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false},"corporate_categories":[6492,6496],"class_list":["post-34129","corporate","type-corporate","status-publish","hentry","corporate_categories-intellectual-property","corporate_categories-intellectual-property__trademark"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corporate\/34129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corporate"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/corporate"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"corporate_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corporate_categories?post=34129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}