Chapter 1025: Lawyer letter

In other words, how many steps are needed to make Canon reluctantly sign such a technology transfer agreement for lithography machines?
Tan Zhenhua summed it up. Generally speaking, it should only take two steps: the first step is to let Canon sit down and negotiate with himself; the second step is to let him sign the contract he drafted-well, Xiao Tan Tan thinks , This is one step less than stuffing the elephant into the refrigerator, and correspondingly, its difficulty should be reduced a lot.
Is this logic right?
...
Mitarai is still in a good mood today.
As the so-called "people are happy in happy events", it has been 20 years since he was sent to the United States in 1966. All the colleagues of the company specially organized a small celebration ceremony for him when he was at work, thank him for his dedication in the past 20 years, and thank him for leading everyone to achieve brilliant performance.
Shio Mitarai accepted this gratitude frankly, because in the past 20 years, he has been promoted from an ordinary clerk in the accounting department to the president of Canon in the United States. Of course, Shio Mitarai will not deny his promotion. It will go so smoothly, inseparable from his being the nephew of Canon's first president, Mitarai Takeshi, but it must not obliterate his achievements in the United States.
When he first came in 1966, the annual turnover of Canon in the United States was only a few million U.S. dollars, but in the past fiscal year 1985 (according to the American accounting standards, the end date of the previous fiscal year was the third of the second calendar year). At the end of the month) Canon’s turnover in the US has exceeded US$2.2 billion!
Undoubtedly, Canon in the US has surpassed the headquarters in Japan and is the most dazzling performance among all Canon business organizations. No matter in terms of turnover, growth rate or profit, it ranks first on the list. This also makes it the president of Canon in the US Having stayed for 7 years, he was full of longing for the position of the headquarters.
Although the person occupying that position now is the son of Takeshi Mitarai, his cousin Hajime Mitarai.
He believes that this is not because he is greedy for power, but because he has been immersed in rice-style business for many years, and his cousin has a huge difference in business philosophy, and his cousin’s business method is too conservative-technical background Hajime Mitarai, who was born, is not only too obsessed with the pursuit of the latest technology at any cost, but also insists on the "one-to-one" personal dependency relationship between employees of traditional Japanese enterprises and enterprises. He is totally unwilling to try to "turn off without making money" Department’s decisive approach in the United States.
This makes Mitarai Toshio often feel "aspirational" or even aggrieved. He believes that if he is in that position, he can lead Canon to go faster and better!
And the series of brilliant achievements he led the American Canon to be a solid foundation for him to aspire to that position in the future.
However, the corporate structure of the Japanese company has always been relatively stable. If there is no special change, it is difficult to change a position like the president. Moreover, his cousin is only 48 years old this year, which is the golden age for this position. , And he himself is 51 years old this year.
Unless there is a special opportunity...
After giving a brief speech, Shio Mitarai returned to his office. After calming down, he began to silently consider the future until the knock on the door.
"Come in," he responded.
The door opened, and it was Charlie Wilson, a lawyer in the company's legal department. Mitarai found that he was holding a document in his hand, and at the same time, his face seemed unsightly.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Mr. Mitarai, I'm afraid we are in some trouble." Charlie said, and handed him the documents in his hand: "The thing I was worried about finally happened. "Matrix" Lab is preparing to initiate a patent infringement lawsuit against us.
Shio Mitarai frowned. He took the document handed over by Charlie and found that it was a lawyer's letter issued by RoseLawFirm. In this lawyer's letter, dozens of "matrix" laboratories were listed. Patented technologies that have been applied for and have been approved, and "Matrix" also accused Canon of using these technologies in its digital camera products without authorization, and requested Canon to immediately stop selling products containing these technologies .
That covers almost the entire product line of Canon's digital camera series.
He also noticed that the "Matrix" laboratory claimed as much as 80 million US dollars for these so-called "infringed" patents.
"Charlie, how do you think we should respond?"
"Mr. President, first of all, I must point out that the original technology sources of our digital cameras are Bell Labs and Kodak. This is consistent with the sources of the "Matrix" lab. Therefore, I cannot exclude the In the process of their respective technological developments, the same technological paths have been formulated, and similar solutions have been adopted for the same technological problems in the process of following these technological paths."
"Huh?"
"And I still need to remind you that the digital camera technology of the "Matrix" laboratory was jointly developed with Sony. At last year's CES exhibition, their product launches were held jointly. The two of them even It also deliberately staggered the product line. As we all know, Sony was the first company to make a commercial digital camera in Japan. Obviously, a patent exchange agreement must be signed between the two."
"So you think that in this patent case, the "Matrix" did not act independently. It must have been negotiated with Sony, right?"
Charlie Wilson nodded and said: "I even have a guess that it was Sony that actually initiated this case, but it was only because Sony was also a Japanese company and it was inconvenient for them to come forward by themselves, so they used the matrix. "In the name."
Mitarai's brow furrowed even tighter.
I have to say that Charlie Wilson's words reminded him that this possibility does exist, and it is not small.
In the process of the rise of the Japanese manufacturing industry, a number of large multinational companies have emerged, especially those in the electronics industry, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fujitsu, Sharp, Sanyo, Panasonic, Toshiba, NEC, Kyocera... …Obviously, the small Japanese market simply cannot accommodate so many companies with similar business types. Therefore, they have not only launched fierce competition in the country, but also expanded the battlefield of fighting to the world-but there is one thing in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Under the coordination of Japan, these companies rarely broke out lawsuits about technology or patent licensing. Instead, they maintained a consistent external pace as much as possible and regarded overseas competitors as common enemies.
This can be regarded as a tacit understanding among Japanese enterprises. After all, many technologies are developed under the integrated mode of "government, academic and research" organized by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and the definition of intellectual property rights between each other is originally relatively vague.
"I will contact RoseLawFirm as soon as possible to see when we both sit down to discuss the matter, but I also suggest that Mr. President can communicate with Mr. Akio Morita once, and perhaps resolve the matter in a more peaceful way."
Charlie Wilson gave his final advice.