Preventing trademark dilution is a form of corporate and governmental biopolitics that seeks to monopolize markets and establish control upon the populace
Hull ’19 (Gordon, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has published numerous articles on contemporary philosophical and political theory, intellectual property, privacy, and the history of philosophy. He is also the author of Hobbes and the Making of Modern Political Thought (2009), “The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property: Regulating Innovation and Personhood in the Information Age”, pg. 17 //nw-avis)
Chapter 2 turns to developments in trademark. The fit between neoliberal models of subjectification and trademark is less precise than in copyright, but by contextualizing the analysis in the context of the development of brand capitalism, I argue that aspects of trademark doctrine are almost uniquely explicable in those terms. Traditional trademark analysis displayed the features of a public biopolitics; developments around branding push it in a neoliberal direction. I emphasize the way that the intersection of law and markets works to make people into brand-focused consumers, who understand themselves in terms of brand loyalties. The best doctrinal example of this process is the emergence of trademark dilution. Nearly inexplicable by an economic analysis grounded in public biopower, dilution doctrine can be better understood as a form of biopower designed to facilitate neoliberal brand loyalties and affective attachments to brands. After an analysis of the emergence of dilution and its departure from more market-based views of trademark, I turn to an extended case study of Victoria’s Secret’s successful attempt to shut down a sex-toy shop that called itself “Victor’s Little Secret.”