In 1995, Congress passed, and the President signed, an amendment to the Lanham Act to create a new federal cause of action for trademark dilution. Where trademark infringement hinged upon the confusion between trademarks, trademark dilution does not require confusion between marks but only a lessening of the capability of the mark being dilutedto identify a product or service. The Federal Dilution Statute applies only to famous marks. The ease of registration of domain names has led to a cottage industry of preemptively obtaining the rights to domain names of persons or businesses. The speculator then attempts to sell the name back to the party who is identified with or uses the name in their business.
Many names are the subject of multiple trademarks.
Sometimes a party may attempt to use the domain name statute to achieve reverse preemption or to prevent others from using a name on the internet when such a prohibition would not be possible under existing trademark infringement or dilution laws. There are a number of domain name disputes which involve attempts by parties to parody or satirize names or causes of others. A 1998 study by Martin Mueller of Syracuse University yielded interesting results concerning the breakdown of cases in a survey of 121 cases. As of May 1998, there were nearly 2,000,000 domain names. Only 3,903 had been the subject of a trademark complaint filed in courts.