Key inventions

Philips’ substantial investment in R&D has generated many breakthrough inventions, such as the Compact Cassette system and the laser based optical disc systems CD-Audio, CD-ROM, CD-R/RW, SACD and various DVD-formats.

Philips holds key patent positions in such fields as optical recording technology (CD/DVD players/recorders and discs), digital compression technology (MPEG Audio/Video encoding and decoding, JPEG, MP3, DAB, Videoconferencing, DVB), interconnectivity (I2C, 1394, Havi, P50), display technology (EPGs, personalization), mobile phones (GSM, UMTS), lighting technology (Xenon car lamps, UHP lamps), and medical imaging (X-Ray/MRI and Ultrasound imaging), while the the company’s most important trademarks are its housemarks, consisting of the Philips wordmark and the Philips shield emblem.

To safeguard an appropriate return on the investments made in R&D, Philips places great value in protecting its innovations through intellectual property rights (IPRs). These IPRs include patents, trade marks, designs, domain names and copyrights. The company currently holds about 100,000 patent rights, 22,000 trademark registrations, 6,000 design registrations and some 2,000 domain name registrations. All these Philips IPRs are created and managed by the Philips Intellectual Property & Standards organization, which has some 300 IPR professionals located in 23 offices around the world.

The standards activity of Philips Intellectual Property & Standards drives the optical storage research and development programs with the aim to generate the technology for future standards such as DVD+RW and Blu-ray.