CIO.com: Beyond creative challenges, how tough is it to find a brand-new name for a technology product given today's large amount of trademark, copyright and other legal issues?

Placek: It's very tough. In most businesses, as you gain experience and your people gain experience and longevity, and you invest in company systems and software, there are many of the aspects of the business that get simple. But in our business, every year trademarks are filed, and we still have only 26 letters of the alphabet. And every year more and more trademark clutter is added to that space, which we have to maneuver through.

There are more products in the marketplace than there were 26 years ago, people are more competitive and there are more ways to reach customers. So, it is more challenging. To give you perspective: Trademark law is divided into 42 classes; technology is Class Nine, with Apple, Cisco and software and hardware. When I started Lexicon 26 years ago, in Class Nine, there were about 15,000 registered trademarks. Just last week, I had our trademark team run the numbers: There are over 650,000 registered trademarks in that class. Now that's just for the U.S. If you're a Cisco, Intel or Microsoft, you're not just doing business in the U.S. You're going to do business in 25 or 30 countries, at a minimum. You can imagine the challenge we have before us.

CIO.com: So how often do you and your staff come up with an awesome name, and you check on it and someone else is already using it?

Placek: Every day. Microsoft just announced their new operating system, the brand for Azure, and we worked with Microsoft to develop that name. From a creative standpoint, we probably developed 3,500 directions, or what we call concepts, at [the first stage]. We worked them to down to 700 to 800 candidates that had, on a continuum, some strength to a lot of strength. And through the legal process and linguistic vetting process, we ended up with about 50 or 60 names to show the client.

CIO.com: One of your more famous names is the BlackBerry. Did you foresee how big the name would eventually become in terms of pop culture and adoption in the business world?

Placek: About becoming the BlackBerry nation? I don't think so, in the beginning. When we first met with the RIM team, they came out here to Sausalito, and they put the device down in front of me on the conference table. I have to say: I really remember that; I remember being quite impressed by the device.

We wanted to give them a great name, which could really help them. At that time, they were going up against the pagers, and everybody had a pager. They were going to compete with all the telephone operators and providers. So they came thinking that they needed a really good descriptive name because they didn't have any money. We actually said the opposite was true: You need to have a really distinctive name. And let the operating companies, like AT&T, let them have the more conservative and descriptive names. But I had a sense that this was going to be really good product.

CIO.com: The BlackBerry is also fondly referred to as the CrackBerry. Did you see that one coming?

Placek: No, we didn't. In a way, it's just a measure of the popularity and the addiction of the machine. We've talked with [RIM] about that. I think it's just a harmless thing, and I'd take this just as a compliment. If it was a losing product, it wouldn't have a nickname like that.

CIO.com: How long is the process, from client first visiting you to when the product is announced?

Placek: For us, it's about a three- to four-month process. We also do research with the target audience to make sure it's going to resonate with them. We will typically do a linguistic and cultural check in about 25 languages, and we'll do that in-country. Lexicon now has 80 PhD linguists in 36 countries. We do that, first, just to make sure we don't have any real negative connotations. And second, [we make ask] is it consistent...and does its sound and structure align with what this product is going to do? We know it's not going to mean the same thing around the world, but sound wise is it easy to pronounce? That takes time—a couple weeks of research. If we were just doing the creative piece, it's a six- to eight-week process.

CIO.com: With all your linguistic work in foreign countries, you must be a fountain of knowledge of slang and slur in all kinds of languages?

Placek: We toyed with the idea of putting together our findings. We've been doing the linguistic and cultural stuff for about 14 years. On an annual basis we might do checks on roughly 1,200 to 1,300 candidates that are moved through our system. When you get down to the final five, six or seven names, you're taking those through the countries. So, we'll do 120 projects a year, which is probably, say, 1,000 names, and multiply that by 14 years—we uncovered a lot of stuff. Some is humorous and some negative. It would make for some interesting reading.

CIO.com: Has the Internet helped your creative processes more than it has hurt, say, due to all the extra legal work you now have to do?

Placek: It's been a great tool for us. Obviously, securing URLs represents a challenge and has made the job harder. But from a creative and information standpoint, we're able to get information about what people are talking about, by reading blogs, and getting a sense of people's vocabulary online.

CIO.com: What's a favorite technology name you didn't come up with?

Placek: Google. It tells a story, like I said before: When you think about search engines before Google, there was just a preponderance of engineering type words or phrases—like Webfinder, Websearcher or Webcrawler. We all experienced that as: These things aren't very efficient or effective, but it was the best that the marketplace was providing. And then here comes Google. Right away [Google] telegraphed a different experience, a different behavior on their part, and that I can behave differently toward it. That's the beauty of a name like that.