OREANDA-NEWS. Ricoh Company, Ltd. has been named to the 2014 Top 100 Global Innovators list by Thomson Reuters, one of the world's leading sources of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.

The Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators Award honors companies that lead global business by protecting the creative ideas of inventions through intellectual property rights and transforming them into successful forms of business. Analysis of data for the past five years is conducted based on four principal criteria: overall patent volume, patent grant success rate, global reach of the portfolio, and patent influence as evidenced by citations.

Ricoh was selected on account of its high scores for the patent grant success rate, which shows the percentage of all patent applications that were successfully registered, and the global reach of the portfolio, which indicates a balance in the patents acquired in the four major markets of China, the United States, Europe, and Japan. We believe that we were selected for the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators Award in recognition of our active global initiatives for technological innovation.

The Ricoh Group is dedicated to accelerating its efforts in growth areas, such as commercial printing, industry products and the consumer business area, with its main focus being the office business. We aim to create new value by further improving our technological strengths and customer contact capabilities as we work to anticipate market changes. We believe the intellectual properties created as a result of these efforts are very important management assets.

Therefore, we are committed to creating highy-valued intellectual property, and will continue to work actively to acquire and implement intellectual property rights that contribute to the protection and further growth of this core asset.