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Looks like the guy in the last picture is having a games of noughts and crosses.

Seriously benchmarking is done by everyone in theory in order to see what the competition are doing.
Some do resort to Industrial Espionage and technical interpretation as we will see in April when we head to Beijing.

Since the BMW Press Conference was cancelled due to events earlier and postponed to the no press allowed conference in the evening for investors and shareholders. We had more opportunity to investigate the latest offerings in the halls which if you do the whole show it is about 9 miles of course it is not physically possible for an employee on press day.
This happens on nearly every press day and we do get ample opportunity to take a look for ourselves. This will of course happen when the X4 M40i receives its world premiere in Los Angeles and the premiere scheduled for Tokyo.

Some are flattered when you come to their stands and they do keep an ear out to here what you say one example what the "lightest car in its segment" Jaguar XE is heavier than the equivalent 3er or wow The Bentley Bentayga looks like a counterfeit Bentley. Or telling a representative of a US owned company your gearstick came off in my hand. (Opel Astra) They may not like it but it is the industry.

@ BMW not only where they at the barriers watching the latest cars race about our hall but also investigating the BMW Carbon Core and which always gets a repeat visit are the BMWi cars the i3 and i8.
To this day we have yet to see a competitor at the same level many are years behind.

The same goes for the i8 and the attraction of sports car manufacturers. They can accelerate similar amounts of CFRP in super sports cars or hyper cars but cannot on their regular sports cars at the same price of the i8.

I could only eavesdrop from the Rotunda when VAG where at the Carbon Core display where they stayed for a while measuring and investigating every aspect.
And recording every detail. We did catch them at Opel before the shit hit the fan later that week.