Intellectual Property Management
Approach
The NGK Group positions intellectual property (IP) as an important management resource. By maximizing the use of its intellectual property and promoting intellectual property activities linked to its business and development strategies, we aim to create new businesses and strengthen the competitiveness of existing businesses. Through these efforts, it seeks to achieve sustainable growth and improve profitability.
What We Aim for in 2030
NGK Group will further strengthen its investment in and utilization of IP, going beyond efforts focused solely on securing IP rights. By integrating IP activities with its business and development strategies, we will create new business opportunities, further enhance the competitive advantage of existing businesses, and contribute to the realization of the NGK Group Vision.
- 1Promoting strategic IP activities
- 2Strengthening the foundation for IP activities
Promotion Framework
Intellectual Property Promotion Framework
The NGK Group aims to maximize corporate value through the strategic use of intellectual property and holds IP Activity Meetings twice a year, bringing together business divisions, development divisions, and the IP Strategy Department. At these meetings, participants discuss and share policies and priority themes related to the creation, protection, and utilization of intellectual property, and promote cross-functional IP activities.
The Development and Commercialization Committee also deliberates on policies and criteria for research and development and commercialization, the selection of R&D themes, commercialization decisions, and the handling of important technologies and intellectual property. In this way, the committee supports R&D and intellectual property management that is fully aligned with business strategy.
In addition, the IP Awards Committee evaluates and rewards efforts that contribute to the creation of intellectual property. This helps raise IP awareness in R&D workplaces and encourages continued creation.
The status of these company-wide IP activities is reported to the Board of Directors once a year. Under the Board’s supervision, the NGK Group works to continuously improve its intellectual property management.
Initiatives
The IP Strategy Department identified four key issues in FY2023 and created a roadmap covering the three years starting in FY2024. We will advance our activities in line with this roadmap and aim to achieve our 2030 goals.
| Key Issues | FY2025 measures addressing issue |
|---|---|
| 1) Fostering an IP Mindset Throughout the Entire Company | Holding the NGK Intellectual Property Forum |
| 2) Strengthening the IP Activities Framework | Holding IP Activity Meetings |
| 3) Improving IP Skills | Revising the IP Education Program |
| 4) Strengthening the Functions of the IP Strategy Department | Developing AI Applications for Summarization and Automatic Technology Classification Overseas Training for IP Strategy Department Staff |
Fostering an IP Mindset Throughout the Entire Company
Holding the NGK Intellectual Property Forum
From FY2024, the NGK Group has held the NGK Intellectual Property Forum as a two-day event to deepen employees’ understanding of IP activities.
In FY2025, around 200 employees from a wide range of functions, including engineering, sales, and administrative roles, took part in the first day. The program featured a guest lecture and introductions to the history of intellectual property and efforts to protect designs.
On the second day, we held hands-on sessions and consultation sessions on tools that use generative AI to support patent searches and analysis. These sessions led to active exchanges of views between participants and IP staff.
We also held satellite hands-on and consultation sessions at Chita and Komaki, with total attendance exceeding 100 people.
Strengthening IP Activities Framework
Holding IP Activity Meetings
The NGK Group’s business divisions, development divisions, and the IP Strategy Department work together to hold IP activity meetings twice a year for each existing business and important development theme. In these meetings, they discuss IP strategies and formulate implementation plans based on analyses of the market and competitive landscape. They also set IP policies linked to each business and development strategy and review progress every six months.
The Group also uses IP analysis tools to visualize technological trends and competitors’ patents, thereby supporting decision-making on R&D and alliances, including obtaining technologies it lacks and licensing out its own patents.
In FY2025, the meetings were held in more than 30 technological fields.
In addition, the Group has enhanced its awards program to recognize excellent inventions and encourage the creation of intellectual property. It also continuously tracks progress using indicators such as the number of patents held and the ratio of applications filed in priority fields.
Improving IP Skills
Revising the IP Education Program
In FY2025, the NGK Group fully revised its IP education program, which had previously been delivered uniformly to all employees, to maintain and improve IP literacy across the workforce. We also clarified the IP skills required for each job function and level. For explanations of the IP system and related laws and regulations, we introduced external e-learning so that employees can access the latest information in a timely manner. To deepen understanding further, we also began using original in-house educational content based on specific internal cases and launched a new IP education program.
Strengthening the Functions of the IP Strategy Department
Developing AI Applications for Summary Generation and Automatic Technology Classification
In FY2025, we developed and deployed company-wide an application that automatically generates summaries for each patent identified through our investigations and assigns it to NGK’s proprietary classification categories. This enabled us to classify large volumes of patent information very quickly using consistent criteria and made a major contribution to the formulation of our IP strategy.
Overseas Training for IP Strategy Department Staff
To gather the latest IP information in the United States, gain hands-on experience, and improve operational efficiency through smoother communication with local agents, in FY2025 NGK seconded IP Strategy Department staff to a U.S. patent law firm for about three months.
Accelerating R&D to Realize the NGK Group Vision
The NGK Group has positioned growth areas centered on carbon neutrality (CN) and the digital society (DS) as priority fields and is strengthening its R&D and IP activities.
In the DS domain, the share of patent applications rose significantly from 32% in FY2024 to 43% in FY2025.
This indicates progress in both technology development and business opportunities in fields that support the digital society, including data centers, communications infrastructure, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Patent applications also increased in other fields that are not necessarily limited to the CN and DS framework, mainly in future-oriented foundational technologies. As a result, their share rose from 20% in FY2024 to 29% in FY2025.
Against this backdrop, the share of applications in the CN domain declined relatively from 48% in FY2024 to 28% in FY2025. However, the Group continues to promote technology development and patent filing activities in the CN domain.
Without being swayed by short-term fluctuations in indicators, the NGK Group remains committed to creating sustainable corporate value through IP management aligned with medium- to long-term social issues and its business and R&D strategies.
