Questel Case Study Series: Bridgestone

“Ultimately, the mission of an IP department is to convert intellectual property (IP) into social and corporate value. To ensure that IP is properly linked to corporate profits, I believe that an IP department cannot exist alone in an organization. It must be closely aligned with the departments that “produce” IP. When developing a corporate patent strategy or trademark strategy, I also believe it is the IP department’s duty to consider overall optimization and ensure that a company’s freedom to operate is properly secured.  

“To achieve this, the role of an intellectual property department is to share information with each internal business unit, and to act in the interest of the entire company by collaborating with related departments in the creation of inventions, the filing, prosecution, and utilization of rights, and every process in between.” 

“We needed to upgrade our IP management software, as the support maintenance for the system we had been using was coming to an end. The system we had been using had been customized haphazardly over many years, and there were no documents recording the circumstances and reasons for the customizations or the specifications of those customizations. As a result, the IPMS was very difficult for people unfamiliar with the background to use, and it was quite unpopular within our company.   

“When we were looking into all the different IP management systems and undertaking IP management software reviews, it was important to us that our new IPMS be cloud-based to reduce the personnel hours required for its maintenance, and that it be accessible from group companies in Japan and overseas.” 

“We issued our request for proposals (RFP) in July 2020, and the decision to implement Questel's system was made in October 2020. In the first five months of 2021, we defined our requirements. In my opinion, this definition stage is critical, since it creates a common understanding between the supplier and the user. To define our user requirements, we organized working groups with different members of our IP department and appointed a Project Management Officer (PMO) from our IT department. As a result, we were able to deepen our common understanding and enter the system development phase.   

“The migration was completed successfully in November 2022, and operations began. Since it was anticipated that the system would be inundated with inquiries at the beginning of operations, we set up a dedicated email address, created an inquiry contact list, and so on. The inquiries were consolidated and shared with the Questel Japan team for centralized management. The Questel team set up weekly meetings with our team, where we could directly ask questions and learn how to use the system, which was very effective in resolving issues quickly.” 

“From an IP management point of view, the introduction of cloud functions has helped reduce personnel hours. In terms of operations, the system's response time has been greatly improved, and operations can now be performed without stress. In addition, I think it was a good opportunity for us to take stock of our business by redefining our operations in accordance with the functionality of our new IPMS.”