Basic Policy
Chiyoda’s intellectual property fuels our position ahead of the competition and vigorous measures are implemented to protect it, and that of others to avoid infringing other party’s intellectual property rights.
Strategies and Activities
We apply three intellectual property strategies to entrench existing businesses, and cultivate new ones, to maintain our competitive advantage in line with our Revitalization Plan.
- Initiatives for new businesses
Contribute to the earnings of focused new businesses as part of our ‘Vision for 2030’ and secure intellectual property that will give us competitive advantage - Initiatives for unexplored areas and businesses
Identify focus points leading to profitable unexplored areas and businesses, evaluate technologies that initiates innovation and formulate strategies for new business development - Initiatives for innovation in EPC technologies
Visualize, codify and patent engineering knowledge and technologies that drive innovation in EPC business
Organizational Structure
As shown in Figure 1 below, the Intellectual Property Section forms part of our Strategy & Risk Integration Division’s Corporate Planning Department and is central to formulating and implementing intellectual property activities tailored to our business strategies, managing intellectual property (eg: filing patent applications) and managing intellectual property risk. An Intellectual Property Manager is appointed in each of our departments mainly responsible for innovative proposals, and cooperate with the Intellectual Property Section to organize departmental patent portfolios and manage intellectual property risk.
Figure 1: Intellectual Property Organizational Structure
Patent Portfolio
We apply for patents across the globe and, as shown in blue in Figure 2 below, hold patents in over 52 countries and regions as of November 2022.
Figure 2: Countiies and Regions in which we hold Intellectual Property
Rights as of November 2022 (shown in blue)
As part of our Revitalization Plan first released in 2019, we are transforming our business portfolio to realize a profit contribution between existing and new businesses of 50% each by 2030, and are filing patent applications for technologies related to new businesses.
As shown in Figure 3 below, the percentage of new patent applications for new businesses increased substantially following the first release of the Revitalization Plan in 2019.
Figure 3: Percentage of Filed Patent Applications related to New/existing Businesses over Three-year Periods
Risk Management
We implement stringent and comprehensive research and reviews prior to commencing a new business to mitigate the risk of infringing the intellectual property rights of others.
Trademarks
We file applications to register new trademarks required for our operations and manage existing registered trademarks, including our corporate logo, SPERA Hydrogen (hydrogen supply chain business) and EFEXIS (digital transformation business) as shown in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4: Existing Registered Trademarks
