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Dave Wieneke has recently written a compelling post on Useful Arts offering tips on how marketers can “stay ahead of their competitors”.

One of his suggestions is to “watch for new competitor trademark applications”. He correctly states that the government site USPTO is a good starting point, but should not be your only source, since it “can spot exact hits, but not close calls” and does not compile information from other sources (e.g, incorporation listings, company directories and product announcements).

Dave suggests supplementing with a service which allows you to search for trademarks and be alerted of new filings:

“…so that when a named competitor registers a new mark, you’ll be notified in time to plan opposition or a marketplace response. You can register to receive notices each time a named competitor files a mark, or when marks are filed in a specified industry.”

“Early Warning” competitive intelligence is critical. But while like Thomson Reuters and similar services provide good information – they can be quite limited, especially in terms of how data is reported and they tend to be very expensive.

We try to avoid tooting our own horn, but in this case we think CI Sense provides a better – and more comprehensive - solution. Rather than merely alerting you to new trademark filings, CI Sense presents and analyzes data in a clear way and provides you with unique information, in report form – making your job much, much easier.

So you can watch your competition, find new competitors, identify emerging industry trends and even get brainstorming ideas.

All this means you don’t simply find out what your competition is doing – but have real tools to “stay ahead”.

CI - Just for Big Businesses? Think Again.

Think competitive intelligence is mostly relevant for bigger companies? Trademark searching for competitive intelligence may be even more vital if you’re a small or medium-sized business.

Often, in this blog, in order to provide recognizable examples, we refer to well know-brands and companies. Chances are, however, that you and your competitor are not P&G, Apple or Pepsi (there’s a reason it’s called Fortune 500 not 300,000).

Vernon Prior astutely remarks:

“If, for instance, a large multinational corporation fails to read the market correctly it can often buy its way out of the problem. A small business making a similar mistake will probably fail completely. In some ways, then, involvement in competitive intelligence is much more important for a small business than it is for a large one.”

Further, a smaller business has its own niche markets and needs to be to keep abreast of new developments. Sharing the same niche market with only a few competitors means an even greater need to look over your shoulder.

“Obviously, if you have an SME [small and medium enterprise] and wish to compete effectively, you should aim to offer something different. …you need to find out what is going on, decide what to do about it and take action before your competitors. That, very simply, is competitive intelligence (CI).”

Smaller businesses are faced with too many elements to keep track of, and up until very recently, developing an efficient competitive intelligence strategy was a daunting endeavor. Watching your competitor involved monitoring every possible source to figure out what your competition was doing, planning and so forth. This was not only time-consuming - but also beyond the scope of many smaller businesses. How many truly have the time or resources necessary to dig “into every corner and crevice available” in order to fully understand where they stand and what to do next ?

Missing something pivotal, as Vernon Prior mentioned, can be the kiss of death. You need to know about developments, as they happen. By the time the news of your competitors new product or direction hits the stands (or the net), your competitive advantage is generally lost.

Overall, of course, there is less information readily available for small companies – but this could work in your favour: having fewer competitors with smaller trademark portfolios means that a given filing by any of one of them speaks volumes about future plans.

Filings for marks in categories different from existing products may reveal that they are trying to offer a new feature to an existing product or have identified a growing demand - or even a new market to tap into.

Of course, trying to discern this by traditional trademark watching, only gives you a part of the picture. CI Sense presents information in context within your industry so that you can use it to watch trends and focus on brand competition. Our mission is to bridge the gap between trademarks and competitive intelligence.

We don’t just hand over raw trademark data. We ask the hard questions: what do you really want to know; is there a new competitor in your market; what are emerging trends in your industry? We combine automated indexing and categorization systems with human intelligence and expertise to provide the context that adds insight to trademark descriptions.

And you can compete as though you’re a big fish – even if you happen to be a size smaller.