question from email

In your chart comparing trademark infringement to dilution, you say that 'likelihood of confusion' requires 'competing uses or goods,' but in Sleekcraft the court found that the product lines were 'non-competing' but 'extremely close in use and function.' (The court also suggested that there were other non-competitive areas where infringement might occur, such as between complementary goods or even if the goods were simply sold to the same class of purchasers.) Is this an area where dilution has superceded what courts might have previously evaluated as an infringement?

Well, I suppose it depends upon what you mean by 'competing': most courts read Seekcraft to in fact find a de facto competitive relationshiop between the products/uses, even though the opinion was a little wobbly on this. The point, however, of the box on the chart is much simpler: regardless of what you call it ('competing', 'compelementary', 'purchaser overlap'), a likelihood of confusion analysis requires a very close relationship between the goods/uses, while dilution (almost by definition, though cf Nabisco) does not.