Management of Technology and Innovation in Japan

From Practice: IP Management in Japanese Companies 371
The person who has directed this patent management at Canon is Giichi Marushima,
now retired and serving as an advisor at Canon. Mr. Marushima emphasized
negotiation skills for Canon’s IP management, and was the main proponent
of personnel development in this area. He told me the following during a conversation:
At Canon, securing a degree of freedom for the company’s business is the most important
of the four objectives for IP management. In other words, I believe that having
freedom for design and development gives the company control over its direction.
In order to achieve this, it is important to take the stance of securing the
company’s superiority in relative problems and relative strength in relationships with
competitors, rather than the digital world of ones and zeros. For example, the larger a
company is, the harder it becomes to secure business superiority. In that case, lawsuits
are the most undesirable method. In other words, small companies can pursue a
lawsuit and benefit from a damage compensation award, while big companies usually
only suffer losses through lawsuits.
I believe that IBM itself has never filed a lawsuit. This is because the company has
confidence that it can steadily obtain the compensation money it wants without the
need for a lawsuit. I think the ideal approach is to achieve a monetary objective without
a lawsuit. This is the IBM style. In other words, the important point for negotiations
is to take an approach where your company and the other company end up with
a win-win situation as seen from the eyes of a third party. I believe that only those
who are not good at negotiations cause situations which result in lawsuits.
Although the IP department plays a behind-the-scenes role in the business, its actions
actually have a leading importance. In short, the IP department is the team that supports
the execution of the business strategy. Its role is to eliminate the many obstacles
that arise, and to execute the business according to plan. The work of this department
is mainly to prevent the company’s business from being eroded by other companies.
Our relationship with Hewlett Packard (HP) provides an example of IP providing
backup for the business. The reason that we have had a long relationship with HP began
with our IP strategy. Canon has a patent portfolio relating to the laser beam
printer (LBP), and as a consequence other companies are not able to use this technology.
Therefore, HP is forced to buy all their LBP engines from Canon. This is an example
of an achievement made by Canon’s IP strategy.
The idea of a license agreement with HP came from the IP department. While the division
formulated the business plan, the IP department considered the best course of
action from the standpoint of IP as the execution support measures. That is to say, a
set-maker like HP usually goes with multiple sourcing at first. Considering what
could be done with IP to avoid multiple sourcing by HP, we decided not to do licensing
with our rival companies for essential core patents. This is one example of business
support through IP. Using this IP strategy, we were able to prevent this kind of
multiple sourcing for a long time.
Not limited to this example, we have to carry out technology development in order to
steadily obtain patents for equipment produced for OEMs. Although cost reduction is
also important, we have to create this kind of “protected” technology even if it means
increasing costs. We also have to make strong patent portfolio. These become the
links between intellectual assets and the business.
Looking at Canon’s organization related to IP, it is made up of roughly three
centers. The first is the IP business center, which is in charge of patent manage-