The Nitta Group’s basic policy is to protect its intellectual property rights while acting with care to avoid infringing on the rights of others. In intellectual property-related activities, we place importance on continuous monitoring of patents in official gazettes and patent searches related to specific business themes.
We also seek to achieve “SHIFT for deepening” and “SHIFT for searching” under our SHIFT2030 medium- to long-term business plan. To contribute to the strengthening of existing businesses and the creation of new products and new businesses, we are pursuing deepening activities and searching activities within our intellectual property-related activities as well. First, as a deepening activity, we visualize and thoroughly investigate intellectual property-related information in collaboration with R&D departments and business divisions’ technical departments under a shared understanding to create an organization that can draft and execute effective intellectual property strategy within our business strategies.
Toward that end, members of our intellectual property department work to systematically strengthen their technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills to improve their capabilities for practical work in intellectual property. For R&D departments and business divisions’ technical departments, we conduct ongoing, proprietary intellectual property education to foster human resources who are both business and intellectual property-focused, thus enabling cooperative strategic activities. Second, as a searching activity, we are strengthening our utilization of intellectual property information. With the goal of acquiring organizational capabilities that enable IP landscaping, we are building a system that can provide materials contributing to business decision-making, such as information that facilitates new business exploration or business profitability. By implementing both intellectual property education and IP landscaping, we are taking a three-part approach in building a system to support more effective intellectual property activities. We plan to maximize business profits through these intellectual property activities.

1. Patent searching (intellectual property-related activities in line with basic policy)

   While striving to respect the rights of other companies and minimize the risk of infringement, as per the Code of Conduct, Nitta business divisions work together to perform systematic and continuous monitoring of patents in official gazettes. We are also 100% focused on promptly performing patent filing searches, infringement prevention searches, and invalid document searches.

2. Level-specific intellectual property education and intellectual property conceptual-skill-improvement training (deepening of intellectual property-related activities)

   We design and implement level-specific intellectual property education led by in-house instructors and using original content. The level-specific intellectual property education is held on an ongoing basis utilizing a curriculum designed with three levels to equip technical staff with essential skills tailored to their level and needs (human resource development).
   In intellectual property conceptual-skill-improvement training, intellectual property managers, who have sufficient understanding of business strategy and what is needed to implement this strategy, provide participants with a visualization of intellectual property that contributes to business strategy. This ensures a mutual understanding among business divisions and intellectual property divisions and leads to the practical use of intellectual property (intellectual property utilization practice).

3. Supporting intellectual property information utilization: IP landscaping (searching of intellectual property-related activities)

   Along with visualizing and ascertaining our own technological status (1C map), we ascertain our position relative to competitors (2C map) and come up with strategic proposals via IP landscaping, which also includes non-patented information (3C map), using each as the situation demands. Also, in order to enhance our capacity for intellectual property analysis, we are cultivating more employees to serve as intellectual property analysts.

We use both deepening and searching of intellectual property activities to support strategic business. We will continue the ongoing evaluation of our investment in intellectual property in a virtuous cycle of effective intellectual property activities.