Japanese industry leaders emphasize the role of intellectual property in the upcoming innovation waves

The workshop on “Exploring the Future of Innovation-driven Growth and the Role of Intellectual Property: Japan Industry Experiences” took place on June 5, 2023, and was co-organized by WIPO and JIPA.

The goal of the workshop was to discuss how intellectual property (IP) can reverse the trend of global productivity declines and how to better translate innovation investments into tangible impacts.

Hearing on this topic from some of the most innovative companies in the world such as Canon, Chugai Pharmaceutical, Mitsubishi Chemical, Panasonic, Sony Intellectual Property Services, Toshiba and Toyota helped make the discussions cutting-edge and close to the business frontier.

At the start of the event, Mr. Shigeaki Tanaka, Secretary-General, Secretariat of Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters, Cabinet Office showed his expectations for sharing views of IP to maximize social opportunities for open innovation, pursuing the roles of IP as an intermediary tool for creating open innovation opportunities, and creating a new "IP governance culture" for these purposes.

Mr. Masanori Katsura, Deputy Commissioner, Japan Patent Office, underscored that global-scale social problems such as the establishment of a new lifestyle in the post-covid and the realization of a carbon neutral society to solve the global warming problem strongly demand the generation of innovation more than before.

Ms. Ikuko Shimogawara, President, JIPA, stated that IP is expected to be the common language to understand the rapidly advancing technologies in data and AI, the innovation they bring, and their impacts on society.

Mr.Marco Aleman, Assistant Director General, WIPO painted a picture of the two looming Digital Age and Deep Science innovation waves and how IP can contribute by incentivizing large investments and improving knowledge exchange across innovation actors drastically.

A few key takeaways:

• Regardless of the industries they are in, co-creation is the key to achieving innovation. IP’s role here is to trigger and facilitate collaboration.
• There is a need for large corporations to be more agile and establish trust by respecting the partners’ core technology and IP when collaborating with startups and SMEs. At the same time, large corporations can help partners’ businesses by sharing their expertise and experiences of IP practices such as drafting stronger patents and building robust and effective patent portfolios.
• Corporate IP departments are assuming broader roles in the digital innovation wave, such as the ability to use IP-related data and contribute to business planning and development.
• Deep science will contribute to solving social problems. Robust IP protection enables deep science and technologies to proliferate.
• Deep science and technology should be able to curb the disparity in society in solving social challenges such as food, water, energy, access to medicine, mobility and logistics. IP plays a critical role to ensure that such technologies are disseminated. Also, as a way of example, autonomous driving requires streaming laws, where IP practitioners may contribute to establishing soft infrastructure.
• Deep science may change the patent examination rules and practices regarding the disclosure requirement of preferred embodiments for chemical cases because of deep science possibly capable of resolving the current lack of predictability. Having said that, this will be linked with the countries’ policy decisions. In view of the strict level of disclosures and the recent U.S. Supreme Court judgment, proper handling is still important.

A few other highlights:

In addition to the traditional roles, corporate IP is expected to assume the roles to analyze information and business planning and business development.

Mr.Osamu Iketa, Canon

The role of IP is to create and accelerate co-creative relationships with partners by utilizing intellectual assets including data, which we call “designing the relationship”.

Mr.Shingo Wakashiro, Panasonic

To utilize data for innovation, in addition to the digital approach through visualization of customers’ needs, global challenges and technologies, and direct dialogues with the customers and the field are critically important.

Ms.Yuki Yato, Sony IP Services

The Deep Science wave is causing two major changes in the chemical industry, one is to enable us to solve social problems such as shortages of water, food and energy, and the other is to transform chemistry from what is very difficult to predict requiring experiment or experience to be predictable to a large extent.

Mr.Hitoshi Abe, Mitsubishi Chemical

Our corporate IP organizations will need to think and act more flexibly to pursue and diversify new modalities which require co-creation with academia, startups, and tech companies due to the increase of players and the complication of IP activities and practices.

Mr.Tomonori Okuwaki, Chugai Pharmaceutical

Deep Science and IP become intertwined more in our business, thereby society and deep science will evolve, which will raise expectations for us.

Ms.Tae Sumimura, Toyota

Open innovation and deep tech have been expanding the role of IP. The proliferation of such recognition is expected to promote the social implementation of inventions and creations and the advancement of the utilization of IP rights, thereby realizing innovation.

Mr. Tomoki Sawai, WIPO Japan Office

The role of IP for co-creating and solving social challenges broadly applies across industries. To respond to the rapidly advancing technology and complicated social challenges, we are committed to further collaborating with various stakeholders.

Mr. Takeshi Ueno, JIPA

Thank you to the chairs Mr. Ken-Ichiro Natsume, Assistant Director General, WIPO and Mr. Yoichi Okumura, the University of Tokyo for their excellent leadership, as well as Mr. Tomoki Sawai and Mr. Takeshi Ueno for their thought-provoking concluding remarks.