The Toyoda Gosei Group conducts intellectual property activities with the policies of (1) obtaining, effectively using, and managing intellectual property rights based on a long-term perspective, (2) preventing infringement of other companies’ intellectual property rights, and respecting those rights, and (3) continuously improving engineers’ intellectual property skills and activating innovation, based on the company’s goal of “Delivering to society the values of safety, comfort, well-being and decarbonization through intellectual property activities with cooperation among all Toyoda Gosei Group companies, premised on full compliance with laws and contracts.”

Toyoda Gosei has established an Intellectual Property Division in its Research and Development Headquarters for the promotion of (1)–(3) above.

We have also established an IP Landscape Project to strengthen intellectual capital, a source of our sustainable growth, and are exploring intellectual property strategies and investments.

To acquire intellectual property rights and use and manage them effectively, we continuously make applications according to each business and development project and seek to guarantee patents that respect the intellectual property rights of other companies.

We are developing human resources to raise the intellectual property skills and awareness of engineers, and cultivating intellectual property awareness to increase innovation.

Toyoda Gosei’s IP landscaping efforts to contribute to the company’s business strategy using intellectual property information for the achievement of its 2030 Business Plan.

In addition to previous intellectual property activities, we define IP landscaping activities as forecast IPL that creates a patent network to outperform competitors and backcast IPL to create new themes and uses. The content of our IP landscaping activities is defined with the following three items:

• Ⅰ. Business strategy activities that employ intellectual property to contribute to existing business and development themes
• Ⅱ. Intellectual property support activities that contribute to new value creation
• Ⅲ. Fixed point observation activities that clarify the company’s position

Toyoda Gosei, to achieve its 2030 Business Plan, makes company efforts that correspond with the materiality in its activities to “strategically strengthen alliances and the development and intellectual property efforts that accelerate global growth,” one of the priority measures raised in the 2030 Business Plan outline, by promoting IP landscaping. As an example of IP landscaping activities, we conduct “Ⅰ. Business strategy activities” to develop new products for BEVs and to develop airbag products and spread their use in order to deliver safety, comfort and well-being to all people, and identify the intellectual capital that is a necessary input in the value creation process. We also seek to acquire and effectively utilize intellectual property rights.

“Ⅱ. Activities associated with intellectual property” are company efforts to build environmentally-friendly business and grow new business. We also seek to increase the accuracy and speed of decision making.

As a result of activities to continuously acquire intellectual property rights based on long-term perspectives, 215 patents were registered in Japan and 128 in other countries in FY2023. These intellectual property rights are effectively utilized as intellectual capital, which is a necessary input in business activities.

Through efforts for materiality (key issues) identified by the company, Toyoda Gosei will contribute to solving environmental and social issues and continuously improve corporate value through the acquisition and effective use of necessary intellectual property rights and business judgments that utilize intellectual property information.