The Tools of Trademark Law Also Serve Competitive Intelligence
I’m attending what is reasonably considered the largest collection of copyright and trademark lawyers in the world. They are fantastically international; I’ve visited w/counsel from Kuala Lumpur, Taiwan, several African nations, and Ukraine. But you know what I don’t see? Marketers.
We like marketers. They are the people with the budget that has made Google Adwords worth noticing. And they’re the ones with the energy that makes social networking and microblogging happen.
A huge portion of domains, trademark, and design is in the service of marketing. So it’s no surprise that many of the sessions and products promoted here are highly relevant to marketers. It turns out that there are non-legal uses to be made of these products to assist businesses. That’s important to vendors who want to increase sales, as most firms devote far more to marketing than to legal execution.
IP Law for Competitive Intelligence
In 2008, I wrote about a myriad ways to use the footprints competitors leave to use intellectual property in competitive intelligence. I’ve seen this developed into an exciting business by Towergate Software, which provides tools for businesses to gain competitive insights through IP law filings. I’ve gotten to know their leadership over the last year, and it’s great to see where they’re headed.
If you’re at INTA Boston, stop by Innography, which lets marketers, and the IP lawyers who love them, mine and create visual representations of patent and trademark data along with financial reporting and litigation records.
You can see who in your industry is ramping up new products, extending them into new markets, and maintaining their marks. Imagine seeing a bubble chart by size of competitors vs. number of related filings and litigation over a specified period. Change the period, and you can see companies enter and leave competitive space. Sub-brands are mapped to parent companies, and everything is accompanied with details from a service like Hoovers.
The future of digital experiences will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data science are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing.
1 Response to "The Tools of Trademark Law Also Serve Competitive Intelligence"
June 1, 2010
There is a wealth of useful infornmation out there that just needs to be properly extracted and presented. It’s not just companies or IP owners that can benefit from these types of amassed competitive intelligence. IP firms can benefit in many intangible ways by sharing generalized information and intel made available to them with their clients or stakeholders within a particular industry. They are businesses too, not just centers of legal expertise. Firms that embrace this notion, and that can successfully integrate both legal and business services provided to their clients, are the ones that will stand out amongst the crowd.