FUJIFILM Business Innovation aims to become a company that can continuously contribute to resolving the operational or/and management issues of customers, by providing document management devices ideally suited to their scale and form of business. We are thus improving our multifunctional devices and printers for both the office market and digital printing market. We are also focusing on the research and development of document-management technologies needed to provide a total document service, which would allow us to offer consultation on diverse and complicated customer issues, and propose effective solutions. The "technology assets" created from research and development activities are transformed into "values for customers (i.e., products and services)" through product development and introduced for the market. At the same time, FUJIFILM Business Innovation protects its technology assets in the form of intellectual property rights (as shown in Fig. 1), and uses those rights for providing products and services for customers on an ongoing basis.
Given their exclusive nature, intellectual property rights can protect technologies against illicit use by other companies. On the other hand, the methods of utilizing intellectual property rights are becoming increasingly diverse, along with a more sophisticated and competitive business environment. In addition to such conventional means as cross-licensing that allow for accessing the effective technologies of competitors, FUJIFILM Business Innovation uses intellectual property rights to promote alliances with other companies for realizing the society that it proposes. The intellectual property strategy must be consistent with future business strategy, so that intellectual property rights can be used as an effective means to achieve that future business strategy. Moreover, it is also important to manage intellectual properties based on a long-term vision, whereby intellectual property rights should be acquired effectively and strategically to realize business strategy. FUJIFILM Business Innovation analyzes the use of intellectual property rights and employs the lessons learned from analysis to improve intellectual property investments and the process of acquiring intellectual property rights the next time. In this way, we are efficiently implementing intellectual property activities, and thereby contributing to our business.