Related anecdote:

A guy writing an on-line anime-ish saga picked a name for his fictional company that produces "real" virtual realities in his fictional universe. It happens to be the same name I've been using for my real company doing VR work for 5-6 years, with actual clients and so on. RealityPrime is the name.

I thought it might be potentially confusing to a client doing a goggle search for me (i.e., they might give up on discovering that RealityPrime is fictional), so I wrote the guy, very politely, and the simple solution we found was to put a disclaimer and link on his site for any wayward googlers. That's all it took.

The only problem I see is that with trademark, I seem to have an obligation to confront any infringements so I don't tie my hands against a malicious person who might come along later. Maybe I could just give this guy an official letter saying he's "allowed" to use my trademark. That might do the trick.

Cory, you may have missed the point:

   Shrinkage (the industry term for reduced inventory due to shoplifting) is bounded. In other words, I might only lose 5% of my inventory, but I keep the other 95%.

   Trademark dilution is unbounded. In other words, an equivalent 5% accepted abuse rate is conceivably enough to get a judge to accept the trademark has fallen into the public domain.

   That's called losing everything, permanently.

   If Walmart could lose the deed to a warehouse because somebody walked out with a stolen Coke -- would there be cavity searches? I can guarantee your membership agreement (and you'd have one) would expressly allow it.

   Cory, this is a semi-bug in trademark law; the real problems include the penalty for mishandling the law, the lack of civility during negotiations, and the non-differentiation between corporate-created context (Akamai, Google, etc.) and corporate-acquired context (Visa). IP is messy and immature -- what else is new?

--Dan