Developing and Utilizing Intellectual Property to Drive Innovation and Create New Social Values

NEC’s purpose is to orchestrate a brighter world by creating the social values of safety, security, fairness, and efficiency, aiming for a sustainable society where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. To achieve this, NEC has formulated its vision for society in 2030 with the 2030VISION, which serves as a compass for management, and is implementing the Mid-term Management Plan 2025 as a business plan to realize this envisioned society. The Intellectual Property Management & Rule Making/Standardization Division is focused on developing intellectual property in growth businesses and advanced technologies to successfully implement the mid-term management plan and achieve the envisioned future. Furthermore, we are utilizing our intellectual property to promote the social integration and co-creation of new technologies and businesses that contribute to realizing this vision.

We strategically allocate resources to growth businesses and advanced technologies that are central to realizing our mid-term management plan. Among these key business and technology sectors, NEC has established specific strengths in biometrics, video analytics, and AI, and we have ranked first in the world in the total number of international patent applications filed in these sectors since 2001.  

To promote and accelerate innovation aimed at realizing our envisioned society, and to encourage the broader use of NEC’s technologies and intellectual property, we are actively advancing initiatives to bring our technologies into society through rulemaking, as well as through external licensing of our technologies and intellectual property. These external licensing activities also contribute to NEC’s business performance by enhancing profitability.

To effectively use intellectual property in developing new businesses and expanding growth areas, we are engaged in internal consulting that utilizes the insights gained from IP intelligence. We have also begun taking on the challenge of creating new businesses based on our intellectual property assets and undertaking initiatives to enhance social value by providing our intellectual property to startups and other companies.

As the world undergoes significant changes, the use of intellectual property is also evolving considerably. Amidst this transformative climate, we are advancing our legal consulting activities to ensure that our intellectual property is effectively utilized in our management and business strategies and lead to the enhancement of NEC’s corporate value. Furthermore, we are working in collaboration with our in-house AI researchers and engineers to advance IP digital transformation (DX) activities that utilize generative AI to further enhance and streamline IP operations. We believe that the outcomes of these IP DX activities can benefit the entire intellectual property industry, and we are also working to make these results available externally.

NEC's Intellectual Property & Rule Making/Standardization Division is committed to building and actively utilizing its intellectual property portfolio to realize our envisioned society and achieve the goals set forth in our mid-term management plan. We will lead the widespread adoption and real-world implementation of new co-creation and innovation initiatives across society through the utilization of our intellectual property.