Intellectual Property Initiatives

Toshiba Group believes that proper management and utilization of intellectual properties is essential to enhance corporate value.
Toshiba Group aims to strategically utilize intellectual property to realize DE, DX, and QX, increase opportunities to find solutions to social issues, and maximize our corporate value.

Toshiba Group’s basic policy on intellectual property rights is to comply with laws and regulations associated with intellectual property rights, to protect the results of intellectual activities with intellectual property rights, make extensive use of those results, and to respect the legitimate intellectual property rights of third parties. This policy is stipulated in the Standards of Conduct for Toshiba Group.
We will be engaged in activities designed to strengthen the intellectual property abilities and strategic concept planning that support our strong lineup of technologies and products, and will increase the number of opportunities available for us to proactively leverage our intellectual properties to resolve social issues, helping maximize our corporate value.

• Standards of Conduct for Toshiba Group  12. Intellectual Property Rights

Toshiba Group promotes “considering intellectual property strategy with a comprehensive view of the entire situation,” “optimizing intellectual property assets,” and “open/close intellectual property” as a co-creation cycle that creates new value.
“Considering intellectual property strategy with a comprehensive view of the entire situation” is the most important step. From the upstream stage of designing a business, we take a comprehensive view of the situation from various perspectives, including a variety of external environmental changes, the patents of the Company, intellectual assets such as know-how, and management and business strategies, and we consider how to use intellectual property and how to link it to the value provided to customers. We do so by taking into account transformations (e.g., DE, DX, and QX) and the use of data.
“Optimizing intellectual property assets” is also an important step. It involves implementing the intellectual property strategy that the Company has devised, and in doing so, we must accurately grasp how our intellectual assets, which are our core value, are composed, including not only intellectual property rights but also technology, know-how, human resources, skills, and brands. We must also acquire more intellectual property if we consider to be lack, and manage (keep secret) confidential information such as know-how to prevent leakage. This helps us to improve and raise the quality of our intellectual property portfolio. “Open/close intellectual property” is an important cycle. By protecting know-how and other differentiating technologies, we ensure the sustainability of our business superiority. On the other hand, by collaborating with companies and customers (partners) that can utilize optimized intellectual property, we expand opportunities to solve social issues that Toshiba Group cannot solve alone, leading to maximization of corporate value.

• Toshiba Group’s Intellectual Property Strategy (Japanese)

The Strategic Planning Group, the Legal & Contract Group, and the Licensing & Litigation Group of the Intellectual Property Office are responsible for formulating intellectual property strategies that take a comprehensive view of management and business strategies, changes in the external environment, and intellectual assets as well as for formulating intellectual property policies that cover Toshiba Group by quickly gathering information on changes in laws and other matters in addition to providing information and making recommendations based on analyses of patent information and other data. They also address intellectual property compliance issues, including those related to the Copyright Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, as well as intellectual property education, securing of business advantages, and contracts and dispute resolution that anticipate risks.
Meanwhile, the Intellectual Property Division, which is dedicated to research laboratories and business units, formulates intellectual property strategies in each development and business domain and works to build and utilize an optimal intellectual property portfolio. We have intellectual property specialists located in both the United States and China to help promote our intellectual property strategy globally.
With regard to management resource allocation, including investment in intellectual property, and the execution of strategies relating to our business portfolio, each of our executive officers report to the Board of Directors on the status of their respective initiatives, whereupon they receive supervision and advice.

The Intellectual Property Division aims to work with research laboratories and business divisions to continue to create value for customers in a way that leverages the Company’s strengths by entering the upstream business.
Specifically, at the upstream business design stage, the Intellectual Property Division collects and analyzes public information (e.g., patents), identifies areas where the Toshiba Group can leverage its strengths, provides information on companies and customers (partners) that can jointly create new value together with us, proposes alliances, and makes recommendations on business schemes and risk countermeasures.
In addition, the Intellectual Property Division, as mentioned above, takes into account transformations (e.g., DE, DX, and QX) and the use of data, and takes a comprehensive view of the situation from all perspectives, including changes in the external environment, intellectual assets as our core value, and management and business strategies. The Division then comes up with a plan for how to utilize intellectual property and link it to the value provided to customers.
At the product/service commercialization stage, the Division acquires the intellectual property necessary to secure business advantages for Toshiba Group and its partners, conducts clearance to mitigate risks, and handles contracts to ensure sustainable cooperative relationships with partners based on the intellectual property strategy the Division has designed.
Through these activities and the delivery of products and services, the Division aims to create new value for customers as well as to expand opportunities to solve social issues and maximize corporate value.

Based on the intellectual property strategy we have developed, we select patent items to implement according to each business’s focus areas and build the optimal intellectual property portfolio. We file approximately 6,500 patent applications per year, and, in line with our global business development, more than half of these applications are filed with foreign countries.
The status of patents owned over the past three years is as follows.

On May 30, 2023, the Japan Patent Office published the results of an analysis of patent information based on the Green Transformation Technologies Inventory (GXTI). In terms of the number of patent families (years of priority claim: 2010-2021), the Company ranks in the top eight (7,665 patent families). We have also applied for many patents related to Green Transformation (GX).
We have about 45,000 patents. Each year, we evaluate all of our registered patents owned, and create an optimal portfolio based on such evaluation results for each business domain.The status of patents owned as of March 2024 is as follows.

To ensure the superiority of our business, Toshiba Group’s core differentiating technologies are kept confidential (“Close”) within the company and provided to customers as added value through our products and services.
By opening up intellectual property (“Open”) that contributes to co-creation to companies and customers (partners) that can work together with us on social issues that Toshiba Group cannot solve alone, we are promoting technological innovation and the expansion of markets and communities, creating new value, expanding opportunities to solve social issues, and maximizing corporate value.

• Toshiba Group’s Intellectual Property Strategy(Japanese)

As part of the education on the Standards of Conduct for Toshiba Group, Toshiba Group provides its employees in Japan with e-learning type training each year for the purpose of refreshing their awareness of the Standards of Conduct regarding intellectual property rights and, primarily, for alerting them to copyright issues. The participation rate in FY2023 was 99.6%.
Newly hired employees are provided with general training on intellectual property rights as part of the Corporate Entry Program （CEP：Corporate Entry Program), which is followed by level-specific education/training programs in line with each business division.
Our subsidiaries in China, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan provide copyright education on topics such as the proper use of software, while our U.S. subsidiaries provide education programs appropriate for the country, such as intellectual property education, using an LMS (Learning Management System). In this way, we provide education at our overseas subsidiaries that is appropriate for the region.

Intellectual property employees are provided with a basic training program and are trained to work effectively within two years through means such as acquiring knowledge of intellectual property rights in Japan and overseas, writing patent specifications, and practicing and participating in on-the-job training on intermediate processing.

• Human resource development(Japanese)

Toshiba Group has established a system to support the acquisition of patent attorney qualifications and provides support for acquiring such qualifications through measures such as subsidizing part of the course fees of external educational institutions, covering the cost of taking the patent attorney examination, providing study time immediately before the examination, and providing support from in-house patent attorneys.
Toshiba Group has 24 in-house patent attorneys (as of March 2024) who are active in a wide range of fields, utilizing their broad and highly specialized knowledge. In addition, an in-house Patent Attorney Committee has been established to provide a forum for activities that span Toshiba Group, such as providing lectures on the aforementioned basic education and reviewing Group policies in response to legal revisions.

The Toshiba brand symbolizes the value of Toshiba Group as a corporation, and the value of the products or services that we offer. In order to ensure the protection of the Toshiba brand, we manage trademark rights and remove counterfeit products.
Failure to take action against counterfeits of Toshiba products would pose not only the risk of damage to Toshiba's brand value and public confidence, but also the risk of purchasing counterfeit products that do not meet the quality expectations of customers who mistake them for genuine products, as well as an increased risk of an accident occurring. For this reason, we strive to eradicate counterfeit products, collaborating with domestic and overseas anti-counterfeit organizations, and are actively appealing to local bodies such as government agencies for more stringent control.

• Toshiba Intellectual Property Website(Japanese)

• WIPO GREEN

• Evaluation by External Parties（Product and Technology Related）