Intellectual Property

Glory implements group-wide IP initiatives to enhance its brand value through inventions and the acquisition of IP rights. We promote the use of IP rights in business strategies, while implementing risk avoidance measures based on IP searches to avoid disputes.

The Glory Group promotes its 2026 Medium-Term Management Plan based on its business strategies of ‘Develop new revenue streams’ and ‘Increase profitability of core business’.

To this end, we promote IP initiatives intended to protect the Group's core technologies and build foundations for new businesses to enhance our market competitiveness. The company's IP Department takes the lead in information gathering and communication between internal divisions in regards to Group-wide business planning and product development.

We promote the use of the Group's IP landscape in our business proposals. Based on the landscape and leveraging its knowledge on IP in the market, the IP Department liaises with our business divisions to help create opportunities for our future growth.

The IP landscape is also used in the process of M&As and new investments, where the IP Department takes an active part in assessment of growth potential of new businesses and evaluation of IP of target companies.

To gain an advantage in the market, we work to obtain IP rights ahead of other companies for our proprietary technologies as well as for the benefit of our future businesses.

We facilitate IP Strategy Meetings to ensure effective implementation of our IP strategies across the Group. We make decisions in consensus with the heads of business units to execute our IP activities, and topics discussed include use of IP rights, selection of business fields, and target countries with feasibility analysis.

To support the creation of new business, we;

−Formulate business policy based on the Group’s IP landscape to support the discussion on new business themes, market size, and potential collaborators

−Review contract details from an IP perspective

−Obtain IP clearance for product commercialization

−Establish a system to support proactive patent applications for proprietary technologies

We enhance liaison between the IP Department and business divisions to use IP for strategic business expansion. We have seen approx. 10% increase in strategic patent applications in Japan every year between fiscal 2021-2023, which we aim to maintain going forward. We also aim for an annual 10% increase in strategic patent applications outside Japan and build a preemptive patent network that is integrated with our business strategies across the Group.

The Group maintains a strong position in the market with the IP rights of our proprietary technologies. Supported by the initiatives of the IP and the Sales departments, we encourage the use of IP rights in the sales strategies to further increase our brand value and business profits.

To enhance the IP capabilities of the Group, the IP department manages the collective IP rights owned by the companies within the Group, controls company-specific IP initiatives and encourages the awareness of IP. To be the first to obtain patents in our current and new business fields, the IP department works with each of our Group companies to capture the latest market trends and customer needs.

To raise IP awareness, we provide training for the Group's business planning and engineering departments. We have also included our sales departments in the training target in response to our recent business expansion. The IP Department offers their own IP training for its members to enrich the expertise as a part of their professional development program. In addition, we have enriched our reward systems to encourage inventions that can contribute to our business expansion.