A mental state characterized by an intent to deceive consumers by using a competitor's trademark or one that is confusingly similar to it. Bad faith is not required to find trademark infringement or dilution. However, courts are far more likely to award monetary damages in a case where there is bad faith on the part of the defendant. Evidence of bad faith has been found to exist where the defendant failed to conduct a trademark search prior to adopting a mark. Interestingly, bad faith is not always found where the plaintiff's mark came up in defendant's trademark search. That is because the defendant may have had a good faith belief that the mark was already diluted from extensive use by others, or that the products or services sold by plaintiff were sufficiently different that those defendant planned to sell.
