This column from the LA Times responds to a question about the way prescription drugs are named.
Not the brand names, there are marketing departments that do that, but the pseudo-chemical sounding names that are used for those drugs when referred to in non-brand contexts.
Turns out that a couple of women in an office in Chicago create them.
An interesting job.
The aim is to avoid products being given “generic names that sneakily come too close to the original manufacturer’s name or the eventual brand name, which could give the company an unfair advantage after the patent expires and generic makers try to compete.
In other words, the generic has to be sufficiently different from the original brand so no confusion is possible.”
