Cite as: 537 U. S. 418 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
the second issue, the court relied on a distinction suggested by this sentence in the House Report: "Confusion leads to immediate injury, while dilution is an infection, which if allowed to spread, will inevitably destroy the advertising value of the mark." H. R. Rep. No. 104-374, p. 3 (1995). This statement, coupled with the difficulty of proving actual harm, lent support to the court's ultimate conclusion that the evidence in this case sufficiently established "dilution." 259 F. 3d, at 475-477. In sum, the Court of Appeals held: "While no consumer is likely to go to the Moseleys' store expecting to find Victoria's Secret's famed Miracle Bra, consumers who hear the name 'Victor's Little Secret' are likely automatically to think of the more famous store and link it to the Moseleys' adult-toy, gag gift, and lingerie shop. This, then, is a classic instance of dilution by tarnishing (associating the Victoria's Secret name with sex toys and lewd coffee mugs) and by blurring (linking the chain with a single, unauthorized establishment). Given this conclusion, it follows that Victoria's Secret would prevail in a dilution analysis, even without an exhaustive consideration of all ten of the Nabisco factors." Id., at 477.8
in this circuit, the court would undoubtedly have reached the same result under the Nabisco test. Certainly, we cannot say that the court erred in finding that the preliminary factors of a dilution claim had been met by Victoria's Secret." 259 F. 3d, at 470-471.
8 The court had previously noted that the "Second Circuit has developed a list of ten factors used to determine if dilution has, in fact, occurred, while describing them as a 'nonexclusive list' to 'develop gradually over time' and with the particular facts of each case. Those factors are: distinctiveness; similarity of the marks; 'proximity of the products and the likelihood of bridging the gap;' 'interrelationship among the distinctiveness of the senior mark, the similarity of the junior mark, and the proximity of the products;' 'shared consumers and geographic limitations;' 'sophistication of consumers;' actual confusion; 'adjectival or referential quality of the junior use;' 'harm to the junior user and delay by the senior user;' and the 'effect of [the] senior's prior laxity in protecting the mark.' " Id., at 476 (quoting Nabisco, 191 F. 3d, at 217-222).
427
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