MarkMonitor Brandjacking Index reveals growth in pharmaceutical brandjacking for popular drug brands

MarkMonitor®, the global leader in enterprise brand protection, today released the company’s latest Brandjacking Index®, which finds a parallel online system of pharmaceutical supply and demand fueled by continued growth in listings for pharmaceuticals on business-to-business (B2B) exchange sites as well as increased traffic to illicit pharmacies. The report also reveals a growth in pharmaceutical brandjacking for popular drug brands.

“Scammers are opportunists, and by targeting the supply chain they’re positioning themselves to move the greatest amount of fake product they can,” said Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer at MarkMonitor. “This maximizes their return on the scam but it also poses a potential danger to peoples’ health and safety, not to mention brand reputation.”

Against the backdrop of the healthcare reform debate and the medical profession bracing itself for another wave in H1N1 virus cases this fall, consumers are turning to the Internet, visiting both legal and illicit online pharmacies, while offshore manufacturers increasingly embrace B2B exchange sites to sell bulk quantities of branded prescription drugs, often of suspicious quality. As more people try to save money when purchasing drugs and more companies look to streamline operations, especially in the current economy, the cost savings and efficiencies of e-commerce become even more attractive, presenting a tempting opportunity for online fraud and brand abuse on both the supply and demand side of the equation.

According to the Summer 2009 edition of the MarkMonitor Brandjacking Index®, online pharmacies have increased their market footprint, growing to an estimated $11 billion in sales in 2009, up from an estimated $4 billion in 2007. The online supply chain –listings on B2B exchange sites – shows strong signs of growth for bulk quantities of pills and active pharmaceutical ingredients in powder form, increasing 23 percent in 2009 from 2008. Listings for pharmaceuticals have grown 67 percent on B2B exchange sites since 2007, when MarkMonitor completed its first study of pharmaceutical brandjacking online.

To complete the study, MarkMonitor chose six leading prescription drug brands and examined nearly 20,000 instances of cybersquatting – the practice of abusing trademarks within the domain name system; 3,000 online pharmacies and 652 B2B exchange listings for those brands during July 2009.

The Brandjacking Index also examined phishing trends for Q2 2009, revealing record levels of phishing attacks and attacks per organization. Payment services continue to be a popular target, representing 49 percent of the total number of phishing attacks in Q2 2009, up from 42 percent in Q1 2009. Social networks have also showed substantial increases in phishing attacks, increasing 168 percent from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009.

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