Meta tags

I would actually recommending a software like Web CEO.

You can then see who is ranking for your meta tags or business name. It provides much less results than a Google search, and if any of them are competition to you they will show up.

I would recommend what Al said on this one though. Hope it helps! =)

care to go into more detail about how you set that up? I actually use webceo, but never knew those capabilities were built in.

search your company name and all variations (one word, two words, misspellings, etc...).  They should come up.

As far as paid search... File trademark paperwork with the engines.  Google will let others bid on your name, just not use it in the adtext.

Not that I am aware of. However, if you have not already done this I'd open up a Google, MSN, and Yahoo! (used to be Overture) keyword ad account and check to see if any of your competition is buying ads based off your company name. You may be surprised by what you find. If you find this is happening and you start to run ads they'll most likely pull those ads that are using your company name.

Also each of the above services have pretty nice keyword search tools that will make it easier to find out the number of searches using your company name in general. I have also used WordTracker (free trial here) which is a paid keyword tool.

But before you pay for WordTracker (it is pretty darn cheap BTW) I might suggestion you ask the community here their thoughts. I've heard both good and bad things about the service, mainly they base their results on data that might not represent fairly anything close to the majority of searches on the Internet (like under 15%).

I should have been more clear on the pulling of keyword ads. Firms can bid on your names, but not use it in the ad itself. So for an examples you can't say, "See why WebEx is superior to GoToMeeting."