Building Winning Trademarks and Trade Name Operations in Biopharma

Industries Profiled:
Pharmaceutical; Biotech; Health Care; Chemical; Medical Device


Companies Profiled:
Astellas; CSL Behring; Ferring Pharmaceuticals; Fresenius Kabi; Gate Neurosciences; Inc.; Genentech; GlaxoSmithKline ; Medicago; Merck; Pfizer; Roche; Stada Arzneimittel AG; Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd

Study Snapshot

Best Practices, LLC engaged 14 leaders from 13 pharmaceutical and biotech companies to examine their trademarking strategy. Repeat companies represented different brands and therapeutic areas from each other.

Key topics covered in this report include:

• Trade Name Generation Process
• Use of Name Banks/Libraries for Trademark Name Selection
• Testing Methods Used for Trademark Name Selection
• Use of Vendors in the Trademark Name Generation Process
• Trademark Naming Group Reporting and Structure
• Trademark Naming Group Investment
• Legal/Compliance Group Involvement in Trademark Name Assessment and Selection
• Best Practices and Strategies for Developing and Implementing Trademark Names

• Name Banks Used Rarely: Name banks are rarely used by companies as a primary strategy for generating tradename. Companies that use name bank mainly use it as a fallback method for tradename generation.

• Multi-pronged Approach Best for Testing: Most organizations use legal screening, linguistic, name safety, and creative research to test tradenames externally. Internally, more than 2/3rd of companies use co-creation and existing trademark analysis. Vendors are involved on a case-by-case basis for trade name generation.

• Process for generating trademark names for brands
• Degree to which benchmark organizations use Name Banks/Libraries for trademark name selection
• Main considerations which dictate whether a name bank will be used for a brand

• External testing methods utilized by benchmark companies during trademark name selection
• Internal testing methods utilized by benchmark companies during trademark name selection
• Level of utilization of vendors in the trademark name generation process
• Preferred vendors used by benchmark organizations for creativity and safety in trademark name generation
• Approach used for naming a leading pharma company’s COVID vaccine

• Total budget (approx. in USD) that resides solely within trademark naming groups; Total budget (approx. in USD) that all of the brands supported by the trademark naming group hold
• Relationship between global and regional trademark naming groups at benchmark organizations
• Trademark naming group reporting structure
• Average number of direct reports at each supervisory level within trademark naming groups
• Trademark naming strategy team structure
• Therapeutic area-specific considerations when generating and selecting trademark names for brands
• Groups involved in the internal approval process for trademark names
• Phase-wise involvement level of different groups in the internal approval process for trademark names
• Job level and function of the decision maker at benchmark organizations who has ultimate authority to determine whether a trademark name is used

• Time of involvement of Legal and Compliance departments in trademark name assessment and selection
• Strategies used by trademark naming groups to cultivate internal support for trademark names
• Topmost important things to consider to successfully garner internal approval on a chosen name
• Prioritization of various regulatory authorities in the order of registering a trade name
• Key challenges faced by benchmark companies when presenting names to regulatory authorities for approval
• Key strategic internal or external differences that organizations are mindful of when generating trade names for approval across the various regulatory geographies
• Best practices for developing and implementing trademark names for the organization