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NTT Group has been making efforts to contribute to settle social problems and to enhance social and economic development by means of building reliable infrastructure such as telecommunication networks or cloud service platforms and providing ICT-based services. In order to achieve this contribution, NTT R&D activities range over a variety of technology fields; core technologies which are produced in basic research and leading to the creation of brand-new principles and concepts, applied technologies which develop network infrastructure or application platforms, energy and environment system technologies, and so on. It is important for NTT Group's continued growth and contributions that intellectual properties produced in R&D activities be protected. In order to integrate three Corporate strategies which are one of intellectual properties, one of business and one of R&D, NTT Intellectual Property Center promotes i) strategic acquisitions of new intellectual properties, ii) risk management of intellectual properties, and iii) best use of intellectual property holdings.

In order to strengthen competitiveness and decrease risks of NTT Group business, the Center proposes right strategies to R&D sections and promotes strategic acquisition of intellectual properties, taking each situation of R&D subject into consideration. Based on the analysis of patents owned by NTT Group and its competitors, the Center cooperates with affiliates to promote acquisition of intellectual properties and to deal with issues raised concerning to third-party's intellectual property rights.

The Center minimizes business risks concerning to intellectual properties by forming a group-wide risk management policy. The Center also promotes securing proprietary information such as technological knowledge. In addition, the Center strives to increase the value of the Corporate brand by managing appropriate use of trademarks and by utilizing the technology brand established through R&D achievement.

The Center utilizes strong intellectual property holdings not only to maintain superior competitiveness of business. But also, the Center positively grants licenses of these holdings on purpose to contribute to the growth of related-industries and to the market penetration of NTT technologies. This purpose also refers to the technology standardization activities which NTT has been promoting for years. The Center makes a continued effort to help the technology penetrate the market by contributing to one-stop license-out programs (named as ‘patent pools') in which patents owned by plural patentees are granted to be licensed under reasonable royalties.