Konica Minolta 2008 Annual Report Download - page 37

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34
Intellectual Property Update
1. Intellectual Property Strategies
The Group maintains a system to improve the quality of patent applications and harnesses the
Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in line with the global nature of its operations. During the year
under review, we recorded 3,945 patent applications including PCT-based and Japanese
regulation-based applications.
The Business Technologies and Optics segments together accounted for 52% of that number,
reflecting concerted efforts under our intellectual property strategies, which are integral to our
business strategies. The proportion of published patents in basic and advanced technologies has
risen every year, reaching 24% of all such publications in the fiscal year ended March 2008. We
will continue to apply for patents in the years ahead to support our white-light-emitting organic
electroluminescent device and other businesses.
2. R&D, Intellectual Property Organization, and Alliances and Collaboration
(1) R&D and Intellectual Property Organization
The Group’s R&D organization covers development operations within each business company and
the Konica Minolta Technology Center, Inc., which explores basic and advanced areas.
The business companies focus resources on their specific fields to create superior technologies.
The Konica Minolta Technology Center reinforces basic technologies and tackles new fields to
drive Group progress.
The Intellectual Property Center, the organizational core of the Group’s intellectual property
activities, is part of the above-mentioned Konica Minolta Technology Center. Here, we monitor
the creation of intellectual property by each business company. Through these organizational and
strategic efforts, the center works with each business company to fulfill intellectual property
strategies that are in keeping with their business strategies.
The center’s branches, located within our R&D units, collaborate closely with those operations,
helping them formulate business and R&D strategies for key themes according to priority. The
center plans, implements and works with R&D departments to polish and evaluate inventions
through activities that foster close-knit relationships with people at R&D sites.
The center stations personnel overseas and promotes intellectual property activities from
a global perspective. Deploying staff in China enables the center to strengthen its local intellec-
tual property activities and respond swiftly to the discovery of counterfeit products. The center
also regularly dispatches its employees to U.S. development subsidiaries to conduct intellectual
property activities locally.
Business Technologies
Optics
Medical and Graphic Imaging
Sensing
Industrial Inkjet
Shared Basic Technologies,
Leading-Edge Technologies
Photo Imaging
Proportion of
Disclosed Patents by
Business Segment
(% )
0
100
80
60
40
20
06 07 08