The Part A of the Pharmaceutical Policy, announced last January, has made a significant observation on an unhealthy trend prevailing in the drug industry in India. It said that the present system of brand approvals is highly inappropriate in the country with an increasing number of products in the market either having same brand name or brands sounding very similar. The document also noted with concern the trend of instances in which the composition of a brand is changed by the companies without any change in the brand name. In the absence of an effective coordination and control in granting product licences, country is having over a lakh of brands for about 500 drugs used in the country. Central health authorities have no idea about what is the actual number of brands floating in the market and their composition. There is also no record with the government how many drug products are in the market with same brand names or similar sounding names and brands with changed compositions. Usually medium and small drug units indulge in this unethical practice to take advantage of the goodwill created by an established brand over a period of time. This situation is extremely confusing and dangerous as physicians committing prescription errors and pharmacists handing wrong products at the counter. Changing composition or misbranding is a practice even some of the established companies tend to do. Two well-known cases of misbranding were that of Disprin Plus of Reckitt Benckiser and Aspro Plus of Nicholas Piramal in 2003. Disprin and Aspro have been well-established aspirin brands in the Indian pharmaceutical market for a long time. With a sharp cut in the price of aspirin by NPPA in early 2001, both the companies discontinued their products but did not give up their well-known brand names. The companies, thus, launched Disprin Plus and Aspro Plus with paracetamol as the only ingredient. These companies had thus placed lives of several patients at risk as most of them cannot be expected to comprehend the total change of ingredient in the brand. The regulatory authorities did not act against these companies for a long time until the press and trade brought pressure on them. Insisting on a No Objection Certificate from the Registrar of Trade Marks at the time of applying for manufacturing licence for a new product can bring some check on this unfair practice. Some states like Karnataka and Delhi have already started this practice. The initiative by the WHO asking state level pharmacy associations in the country to prepare comprehensive database of drug brand names approved by the state drug authorities is significant in this context. Such a documentation of registered drug brands could substantially reduce chances of misbranding and wrong dispensing. This could ultimately help India to build a national registry of drug brand names. The Union health ministry needs to take this suggestion of WHO quite seriously an act upon without delay.