What does a trademark protect?

The basic purpose of trademark law is to avoid consumer confusion. As such, trademark laws are designed to allow merchants to protect their reputation and goodwill in the consumer’s mind and a trademark owner is therefore able to prevent others from using any mark which is likely to cause confusion. For example, if you wanted to sell a soda cola under the brand name of COCA-COLA, you could be prevented from doing so because you would be likely to confuse consumers, who would assume your soda was an actual COCA-COLA product.

Trademark law does not protect against the use of a mark where there is no likelihood of confusion (unless that mark is diluting someone else’s famous trademark, nor does it offer protection to someone who is using a deceptive mark.