infringed

American  

[in-frinjd] / ɪnˈfrɪndʒd /

adjective

1. violated, transgressed, or encroached upon, as a regulation, restriction, or right.

   The costs of enforcing an infringed patent can be exceedingly high.

   He complained that CCTV was an ever more common security measure for which we all pay the price of infringed privacy.

2. illegally copied, distributed, or sold, as in contravention of a copyright or patent.

   A judge dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the allegedly infringed material lacked the requisite originality.

3. relating to or being someone whose copyright, patent, etc., has been violated.

   When awarding damages, it must be considered how wealthy the infringed company could have been without the infringement.

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verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of infringe.

Other Word Forms

• uninfringed adjective

Etymology

Origin of infringed

First recorded in 1590–1600; 1955–60 infringed for def. 2; infringe + -ed ² for the adjective senses; infringe + -ed ¹ for the verb sense

Example Sentences

Last year, the celebrity video platform Cameo sued OpenAI, alleging that the San Francisco company infringed its trademark.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 18, 2026

Solos’s complaint, filed Friday, alleges the defendants infringed on Solos’s patents involving smartglasses, including functions such as multimodal sensing, audio processing, intelligent assistance and integrated-system architectures for real-time user interaction.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 23, 2026

District Court for the Central District of California, a jury found that Apple infringed on a Masimo patent, and awarded $634 million in damages to Masimo.

From Barron's • Dec. 26, 2025

Cox did provide warnings to its users once they infringed, but warnings are hollow when there is no actual threat of account termination.

From Slate • Nov. 28, 2025

“There can be no lighter topics when human rights are being infringed upon.”

From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer