To infringe means to break a rule, violate someone's rights, or go beyond proper limits. When you infringe on something, you're crossing a boundary you shouldn't cross.

The word appears most often in two important contexts. First, you might infringe on someone's rights or freedom. If your neighbor plays loud music at midnight, they're infringing on your right to sleep peacefully. If a government passes laws that prevent people from speaking their minds, those laws infringe on free speech.

Second, you can infringe on copyrights, patents, or trademarks. Copyright infringement happens when someone copies a book, song, or movie without permission from whoever owns it. If a company uses another company's invention without a license, they're infringing on that patent. Creators and inventors have the right to control and benefit from their own work.

An infringement is the act itself: “The judge ruled that the unauthorized copying was an infringement of copyright law.”

Notice that infringe usually requires the word “on” or “upon” afterward: you infringe on rights, you don't just infringe them.