Brand Management

At the Canon Marketing Japan Group (hereafter, the "Canon MJ Group"), we engage in activities aimed at improving the brand value of Canon and the Canon MJ Group in Japan.

The Canon MJ Group complies with advertising-related laws and regulations and the industry's voluntary regulations in our PR, advertising, and the similar activities for communicating our products, corporate information, and other information to our stakeholders. This is how we advance our communication activities to help improve our brand value.
For our employees, we provide training and implement a range of awareness-raising activities to have them share the awareness and knowledge of our brand and our values.

We engage in activities to manage the logo as the symbol of the Canon brand and other marks such as company names and product names. We deliberate on changes of Group companies' names and on the names of new products. We have also built and managed an appropriate framework for the deliberations.

The Brand Strategy Committee is the highest organ that deliberates and makes decisions on important matters related to brand strategies.
Normally, deliberations and decisions on suggested names of products and services are made by the Product Name Committee, which operates under the aegis of the Brand Strategy Committee. However, the final decision is made by the Brand Strategy Committee where the product or service is deemed particularly important from the viewpoint of the Canon MJ Group's strategy.

We are working to protect our rights by applying to register trademarks to protect the names of our own services and solutions, the names of internally developed software and suchlike. In addition, we carefully research trademark rights to avoid infringing on third-party trademark rights, placing emphasis not only on protecting our own rights but also on respecting the rights of others. We also collaborate with the Product Name Committee, set up under the Brand Strategy Committee, to consider whether the names of products and services of the Canon MJ Group are suitable.

As an initiative to address the issue of copyrights, Canon MJ produces original clip art and makes it available within the Group. We began producing clip art in 2012, and there is now more than 1,000 pieces of content available.
This content is used in a wide range of applications, including in-house materials, materials published publicly for customers, websites, and delivered products, and we have put in place an environment in which our employees can use clip art with peace of mind.

When undertaking system development, we respect third-party rights and research third-party rights to avoid any infringement of patents, etc. With respect to OSS used by development departments, we issue Guidelines on the Use of OSS and also put effort into educating employees, regularly holding OSS training for employees, to ensure respect for license terms and conditions and appropriate use.

At Canon MJ, we take various measures jointly with Canon to stop the occurrence and spread of problems caused by deluge of counterfeit goods.
In recent years, counterfeit battery packs and chargers for digital cameras and digital video cameras manufactured by Canon, battery grips and remote controls for our digital cameras, and printheads for our inkjet printers have been found on e-commerce sites and flea market websites in Japan. Counterfeit goods not only cause quality problems and other troubles to customers who purchased them believing that they were authentic products but also have a risk of explosion. This applies particularly to battery packs.
Therefore, at Canon MJ, we alert customers via our website by letting them know that counterfeit goods are distributed in the market and explaining to them the characteristics of the counterfeit goods. In addition, regarding counterfeit Canon products sold on e-commerce sites and at flea market websites, we send warning letters to the sellers and other parties. This has resulted in outcomes that have included their disclosure of supply routes and written promises to stop infringing on Canon's rights. Regarding heinous cases, we cooperate with the police in detecting such cases.
Moreover, to prevent the inflow of counterfeit goods from other countries, we cooperate closely with customs in each region. As a result, imports of a large number of counterfeits of Canon products have been stopped by multiple customs offices.