Canadian trademark law provides protection to marks statutorily under the Canadian Trade-marks Act and also at common law. Trademark law provides protection for distinctive marks, certification marks, distinguishing guises, and proposed marks against those who appropriate the goodwill of the mark or create confusion between different vendors' wares (i.e., goods) and services or both. A mark can be protected either as a registered trade-mark under the Act or can alternately be protected by a common law action in passing off.

Most of the law of passing off has been inherited from the UK case law. For a successful action in passing off the claimant must first show that the owner of the wares had goodwill or reputation within an identifiable market area. Second, the claimant must show that the other party's use of the mark constitutes misrepresentation of their wares as those of the claimants. Third, the claimant must show that the misrepresentation could potentially or actually did cause harm.

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.

A trademark may be designated by the following symbols:

A trademark is typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. There is also a range of non-conventional trademarks comprising marks which do not fall into these standard categories, such as those based on color, smell, or sound.

The owner of a trademark may initiate legal proceedings for trademark infringement to prevent unauthorized use of that trademark. Most countries require formal registration of a trademark in order to pursue this type of action. A few countries, including the United States, recognize common law trademark rights, which means action can be taken for trademark that is in use but not registered. In the United States, registration is not required, but it increases the legal protections offered to the trademark holder.

Michael Rubin (* 1971) is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School [3], and an Expert at Wikistrat.

A native of Philadelphia, Rubin earned a Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1999. His dissertation, The Making of Modern Iran, 1858-1909: Communications, Telegraph and Society won Yale's John Addison Porter Prize. Between 2004 and 2009, he was editor of the Middle East Quarterly. He has received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs.

Rubin has lectured in history at Yale University, Hebrew University, Johns Hopkins University, and worked as visiting lecturer at Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Between 2002 and 2004, Rubin worked as a country director for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, from which he was seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Rubin currently teaches senior U.S. Army, U.S. Marine, and U.S. Navy leadership prior to their deployment to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan.