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Creation: Creating Intellectual Property in Tandem with Business Operations
NEC’s Intellectual Property Management Division: Patent StrategyPromoting the Creation of Intellectual Property to Enhance Corporate Value
To enhance NEC's global corporate value, the Development Promotion Department transforms the innovations created by NEC into intellectual property. We support the creation of inventions with future applications in mind and promote activities to secure intellectual property rights. Additionally, the intellectual property we create is developed into a global portfolio and we further continue to enhance its quality and maintain a proper quantity through strategic management. In terms of utilizing intellectual property, we manage areas related to patented technology and work closely with our colleagues in the Licensing Department and Litigation and Counsel Department to expand business opportunities for NEC and promote the widespread use of its technologies.
Department Manager, Development Promotion Department
(Senior Director)
Sato Kensaku
The Development Promotion Department develops intellectual property which supports the creation and sustained growth of NEC’s businesses. Our endeavors include supporting the development of inventions and securing patents with their future applications in mind. Additionally, we are also responsible for obtaining trademark rights worldwide to protect NEC’s brand and design rights to safeguard our product designs globally.
From the early stages of business and research projects, we proactively engage with business divisions and research labs, offering advice on which aspects of intellectual property should be patented. In the area of patents, we strategically identify and focus on key fields to develop a high-quality and appropriately sized patent portfolio that represents NEC as a whole. We engage in detailed discussions with inventors and relevant stakeholders in order to enhance the quality of our patents, refining them to improve their objective evaluations by third parties. NEC is also actively involved in standardization activities in areas such as global 5G and is committed to strengthening our acquisition of standard essential patents (SEPs) stemming from these efforts.
We also focus efforts on the education and professional development of our team members who lead our intellectual property activities. For example, we offer both short-term and long-term job training in the U.S. Through these programs, several members are sent each year to law firms based in the U.S. to learn about foreign patent systems and gain practical experience.
We are also strengthening our efforts in invention creation and intellectual property rights acquisition at overseas research facilities and local subsidiaries. We have dispatched members from Japan to the U.S., U.K., and Germany, while in China, we have established a team of local members. Through close collaboration between our Japanese and international teams, we are promoting these activities worldwide.
The intellectual property we create are invaluable strategic assets that foster co-creation with our customers and partners. We collaborate with various divisions to determine which intellectual property can enhance co-creation and how to utilize them to build trust and strengthen relationships with our customers and partners. Our initiatives also include public relations campaigns to inform customers abouts NEC's advanced technologies by showcasing them through patents. In our key business sectors, such as biometrics, video recognition, and analysis and prescription AI fields, we aim to create a globally respected patent portfolio by 2025, supported by objective quality assessments and a robust volume of patents.
