This article will consider the relevance of consumer motivation to the trademark and unfair competition doctrines of functionality, secondary meaning, aesthetic functionality, and genericness. Its usage within these doctrines will be analyzed in an effort to ascertain any underlying presumptions concerning consumer behavior and competition. Concomitantly, this article will examine the value of consumer motivation, with reference to the psychological construct of consumer motivation, as a construct for resolving the legal issue of whether protection against copying a product or ‘word, name, symbol or device’ should be afforded. This will be attempted, in the light of preserving the ‘right to copy’ as a basic tenet of free competition theory, without seriously eroding established fair competition principles of trademark and unfair competition law.