Sony 2007 Annual Report Download - page 50

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4747
Intellectual Property Supports Sony’s Technologies and Products
Since its establishment, Sony has sought to ensure the proper protection of its intellectual
property rights3—R&D accomplishments that are essential to sustaining its growth strategies—
and to utilize such intellectual property rights to strengthen the competitive advantage of its
businesses. Sony’s intellectual property strategy is forged in close alliance with its R&D and
business strategies, and all three are implemented in an integrated manner.
The intellectual property process starts with obtaining intellectual property rights, such as
patents, on inventions and concepts generated through our R&D and other activities. Analysis
and evaluation of the structure and content of intellectual property portfolios play a critical
role in the rights obtaining process.
The Intellectual Property Division works closely with the business groups, analyzing and
studying intellectual property portfolios in accordance with R&D and business strategies for
individual fields as well as the entire Sony Group, providing input into decisions about future
R&D directions and strategy for obtaining intellectual property rights. For example, we began
in-house R&D in the area of OLED displays early on, fostering technologies necessary for
commercialization and related intellectual property, enabling us to apply for numerous patents
for crucial technologies and strengthen this portfolio.
Consideration is given to both the operating environment of the relevant business and the
state of its intellectual property portfolio in determining the most effective use of intellectual
property rights. Based on the business’s operating environment, the decision is made to
keep intellectual property in-house, license it to third parties or enter cross-licensing
agreements to ensure business flexibility.
In the digital network age, ever-increasing numbers of standardized technologies and
their patents owned by various companies are being incorporated into products. To provide
broad, rational accessibility to such technologies within the industry, we are participating
and cooperating actively in the development of structures for patent pools, agreements
between companies to aggregate their patents relating to particular technologies and licenses
in response to requests from interested third parties with reasonable licensing terms.
In addition to in-house efforts, we are also entering strategic joint development alliances
with other companies based on the results of intellectual property portfolio analysis, to
accelerate R&D and the commercialization of new products and services.
3Intellectual property rights include patents, designs, trademarks, copyrights and proprietary information,
among others.