Management of Technology and Innovation in Japan

368 Y. Mori
70% of this type of income, and this demonstrates the superiority of their IP management.
Looking inside Hitachi’s IP management, we can see that the company is maintaining
its own profitability in the IP department while closely coordinating IP
strategy with business strategy. Organizationally, Hitachi also posts top-tier personnel
in its IP department, which shows the company’s intention to achieve profitability
from IP.
In order to sort patents strategically, a meticulous investigation of carefully
screened patent applications is carried out at the time of invention. The company
has established a process to strategically select inventions, and prepares detailed
documents on inventions designed as strategic patents, and carries out priority
processing of examinations of overseas applications. For example, in order to select
strategic patents, Hitachi classifies patents for application into five levels, A
through E. The A patents are considered to be the strategic patents, and these are
further divided into the three ranks of gold, silver, and bronze.
Strategic patents are those fundamental and necessary inventions that cannot be
avoided in terms of the principle products and technologies of the future. At the
same time, they must be superior cutting edge technology and inventions that have
been confirmed as technologically realizable. Furthermore, these patents must be
inventions that can be reliably adopted on a large scale, and must be inventions
that the company plans to adopt as part of major research themes. Therefore, they
must also be given the highest priority for application processing. Hitachi has set
targets for the number of these strategic patents: for example, 20 to 30 gold patents,
70 to 80 silver patents, and around 200 bronze patent applications.
The next most important patents are called basic patents, and these are the inventions
that it will be difficult for other companies to avoid once the patents are
registered. At the same time, these represent the favored technology in research
and development planning, and must be inventions for which there is a fair degree
of technological realization potential. These patent applications are given priority
processing. Unlike strategic patents, the target numbers for these are in the thousands,
in the range of 2,000 to 4,000 applications.
Next are the so-called regular patents. These are difficult for other companies to
avoid, and are superior inventions compared to those of other companies. Efficient
processing is carried out for these patents, and the target number of applications is
in the range of 7,000 to 8,000.
Then comes the fourth group of patents, called public patents. These are somewhat
difficult for other companies to avoid, and are fairly profitable inventions for
the company. Although the rights are not necessary for the company, they serve
the role of preventing other companies from utilizing the technology. These are
also processed in an efficient way. The target number of applications is from
8,000 to 10,000 patents.
Finally, there is the deferred group of patent applications. This is technology
that would be easy for other companies to avoid, and is not so different from existing
technology. Furthermore, since they are not important patents, they can be
postponed. Roughly several thousands of these patents are expected at Hitachi.