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Your trademark is the most important asset your business will ever own. A good trademark will distinguish you from the competition and help you stand out in a crowd. A poor trademark will entang

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

le you in legal disputes and blunt your marketing efforts. Selecting a good trademark is as simple as following these guidelines.

First of all, avoid Trademarks that cannot be Registered. There

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

is no point investing in a trademark that you can’t register. Registering the mark protects it from competitors, ensures your ownership rights in the mark and makes it easier to enforce your righ

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

ts against copy cats. As you will read below, certain types of words are inherently poor choices as trademarks because they cannot be registered.

Avoid Purely Descriptive Words. Words which des

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

ribe the nature or quality of the goods or services sold with the mark are not permitted to be registered. Hence, the mark “Cold Beer” for use with malt beverages cannot be registered because it

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

escribes the actual product being sold. If registered, it would prevent anyone from using the terms Cold and Beer to describe a malt beverage.

Avoid Surnames. Surnames cannot be registered as t

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

rademarks. Hence the mark “Wilson Power Boats” is a poor choice for a trademark because the word Wilson is a surname (and the rest of the mark is descriptive).

Avoid Confusing Trademarks. A tra

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

emark which is confusingly similar to a registered trademark cannot be registered. Hence, the mark “Sun-Screen” cannot be registered if the trademark “Sun Screen” has already been registered for

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

similar type of product. A search of the US Trademarks Database and/or the Canadian Trademarks Da

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

tabase is a good idea.

Avoid Generic Words in a Trademark. The goal is to select a trademark which is as unique and distinctive as possible; therefore, avoid generic words. Examples of gene

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

ic words include “green, superior, American, Canadian, deluxe, gold, economy, premium” and a plethora of others. If you incorporate generic words into your trademark, then you blend into the crow

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

, not stand out in front of it. Geographic words fall into this category.

Avoid TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms) and Numbers. IBM, CNN and ATT are distinctive trademarks because their respective o

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

wners invested tens of millions of dollars into making the marks famous. Even a poor trademark can be made famous if you through enough money at it. But acronyms are intrinsically difficult to r

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

member, while words, especially colorful words, are easily remembered. Hence “ELS System Solutions” is not as memorable as “Volcanic Silicon.” Likewise, avoid using numbers in a trademark as the

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

tend to be less memorable. Furthermore, there are a limited number of unused acronyms available, so there is an excellent chance that your TLA will be confused with another.

Do use invented wor

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

ds. Invented words are words which do not exist in any language, apart from your trademark. Examples include SPANDEX, EXXON, KODAK, VIAGRA, and several other famous trademarks. Invented words a

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

e a good choice because they tend to be quite distinctive. You can create an invented word by simply combining parts of other words. For example, MICROSOFT is a combination of “Micro computer” a

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

d “software.”

Try animal or plant names. Animal and plant names tend to be quite memorable and, if used correctly, can convey a good image while still being distinctive. APPLE COMPUTERS, TIGER

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

DIRECT, and Ford MUSTANG, are good examples.

Finally, make sure that the first word in your trademark is as distinctive as possible. It is often necessary to add descriptive words to the tradema

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

k in order to convey what is being sold or marketed in association with the mark. If generic words must be included, then it is vital that the first word of the mark be as distinctive as possible

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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