Innovation

• Intellectual Property Strategy
• Digital Transformation (DX) Strategy

The Dexerials Group regards intellectual property as one of its most important management assets. Beyond building and optimizing our own patent portfolio, we proactively conduct IP intelligence activities^＊1 including IP landscape^＊2 and other analyses to drive new business creation and support the development of new markets and applications.
In fiscal 2025, Dexerials has been integrating IP functions in the R&D Division to establish a framework that accelerates value creation in terms of both technology and intellectual property. This aligns with our business model of anticipating future needs and proactively providing solutions. By integrating technology and intellectual property, we are promoting forward-looking value creation and contributing to sustainable growth.

• *1IP intelligence activities: Activities for systematically collecting and analyzing patents, technology trends, and market information to support decision-making for business strategy, new market development, and competitiveness strengthening
• *2IP landscape: Comprehensive analysis of patent information and technology trend data from multiple perspectives, visualizing the market environment and competitive landscape for use in planning business strategy and R&D policy

Our intellectual property strategy consists of the three stages outlined below.

Dexerials promotes the acquisition and utilization of IP rights in key countries to secure differentiated technologies and strengthen global business competitiveness. As of the end of fiscal 2024 (March 2025), the global patent ownership ratio was approximately 66%, which aligns with Dexerials’ global sales ratio of around 67%.
Dexerials is also actively investing in intellectual property related to photonics, a field positioned as a growth domain. In fiscal 2024, patent applications in this area accounted for 10% of total patent applications.

Dexerials is actively investing in intellectual property in development domains, with R&D-related patent applications accounting for approximately 30% of the total.
Through our Design-in and Spec-in activities, we anticipate customers’ technical issues and needs, and protect the new ideas born from combining insights with Dexerials’ core technologies as intellectual property. This allows Dexerials to deliver competitive solutions that reflect the technological trends, reaching a wide range of stakeholders, from direct customers to end users.

Dexerials promotes IP intelligence activities, utilizing Company-wide IP landscape analysis as a decision-making tool.
In existing domains, Dexerials offers information about new technologies, new markets, and competitors from an IP perspective, supporting qualitative product enhancement and market expansion.
In growth domains, Dexerials’ IP portfolio is compared with those of benchmark companies, and we formulate an IP strategy by back-casting from our established vision of what we want to be.
Furthermore, with respect to innovation, co-creation, and alliances, the latest technology trends and academic data are studied to identify key growth technologies and potential co-creation partners, thereby facilitating expansion into previously uncharted fields.

Dexerials has identified technology and human capital together as materiality. To achieve sustainable growth, it is essential to steadily cultivate talented individuals (such as inventors) who possess advanced technical skills and a strong IP-oriented mindset.
In fiscal 2023, we introduced an incentive system called the “First Step of Invention” for first-time inventors (who apply for their first patent application after joining Dexerials, including mid-career hires). Accordingly, the initiative produced first-time inventors who are approximately 25% of all inventors.
In fiscal 2025, Dexerials began the trial implementation of two new recognition programs: the “Best Proposal Award,” which honors inventors who submit exemplary invention reports to serve as role models, and the “Best Research Award,” which honors inventors who conduct patent searches on their own using advanced techniques. High-quality invention reports form the basis for strong patent rights. Such reports and search skills are shared across Dexerials to strengthen and cultivate the ability to generate inventive proposals.
We also engage in dialogue with certain investors regarding Dexerials IP strategy and related initiatives. Through this communication, Dexerials aims to enhance the capital market’s understanding of our IP strategy by demonstrating both the sustainability and competitiveness of our business model.

As a result of active IPL-based collaboration and discussions among business units, corporate R&D, and departments related to new business creation, open innovation is gaining momentum and various patent analyses are being used to search for business partners.
One example of our open innovation activities is our participation in WIPO GREEN (a matching platform for environmental technologies and IPs promoted by the World Intellectual Property Organization), where we are making effective use of more than 100 of our own environment-related patents on a global basis. Furthermore, in April 2023, we jointly established the “Photonic Meta Sensing® Co-creation Research Center” with Tohoku University. We are promoting open innovation by leveraging the IP of both parties.

• Environmental Measures

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