Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Strategy

To support the execution of business strategies, we protect intellectual property (IP) created within the company through patents, designs, trademarks, and more, while also identifying IP risks and taking measures to prevent them in advance. We are also engaged in activities that support business expansion and the creation of new businesses through the analysis of IP information and other data.
As the digital transformation (DX) progresses, it has become necessary not only to be cognizant of the scope of intellectual property rights in patents, designs, trademarks, and so on, but also to pursue IP activities that extend to the data. For example, when building solutions by utilizing data obtained from devices, it is also necessary to consider how the data is handled.
In addition, in M&A, we investigate and evaluate the IP status of potential candidates, and in collaborations with other companies, we address various IP-related issues such as IP agreements with partners.

Initiatives

We promote the formulation and implementation of IP activity plans in line with our business strategy. We are taking steps to secure IP both from the perspective of competition, meaning barriers to entry, constraints on competitors' efforts to follow after us, and the balance with our competitors in IP capabilities, and from the perspective of collaborative creation, meaning the creation of alliances and bonding with customers and partners. We envision patterns of IP use and consider what kind of intellectual property rights it is necessary to protect, and with what timing, in order to implement the PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle in our activities.
On the other hand, responding to open innovation is also important. It is important not only to secure exclusive rights, but also to consider whether we can utilize the outcomes of open innovation in our business operations.
We are also coordinating with business departments with respect to trademark strategies in order to increase the brand value of our products and services.
We seek to ensure that others respect our intellectual property rights while we also respect the intellectual property rights of others.

There is demand for solutions using physical and non-physical things. In the service and solutions business, collaboration with customers and partners is the key. It is vital to deal with IP provided to customers and partners and with IP created during the collaboration process. The handling of IP that cannot be fully protected by intellectual property rights alone, such as data and knowhow, is particularly important. Regarding that, we provide support from the intellectual property perspective for everything from non-disclosure agreements at the proof of concept (PoC) phase, to co-development agreements, and contracts at the commercialization phase, to ensure a win-win relationship with customers and partners.

To support departments considering business strategies, we are engaged in activities that provide analysis results of IP information and more, tailored to each stage such as exploring business ideas, concretizing and commercializing business ideas, and business expansion. Such activities are also referred to as IP landscape, and are recognized as one of the roles of the IP Division.

The IP Division is a team of experts, including ten Japanese patent attorneys and one Chinese patent attorney (as of April 2025). While taking steps to develop human resources capable of handling business globalization, we are aiming to build an organization that can make good use of the diverse experiences possessed by individuals.

In addition to implementing IP education for employees, we are taking steps to energize IP creation activities by employees by establishing an improved inventor incentive program and an intellectual property rights commendation system. We have arranged to review these systems as necessary in response to changes in the business environment and so on.

The Hitachi High-Tech Group ratio of overseas revenues for FY2024 exceeded 70%. To respond to this globalization of our business, we are reinforcing patent applications and acquisition of rights in foreign countries. In FY2024, overseas patent applications made up 73% of our total applications. We are also providing support for IP activities by overseas group companies, such as assistance in formulating IP policies concerning development.