Nobuo Tanaka is a senior general manager, head of intellectual property and design center, at Yokogawa Electric Corporation. Mr Tanaka is responsible for all Yokogawa company’s IP-related activities, including patent prosecution, licensing, as well as design-related activities, including experience design and product design. Mr Tanaka joined Yokogawa in 2019. Since then, Mr Tanaka drastically transformed IP function to be strategic. For example, Mr Tanaka revised internal IP regulations and IP-related parts of the management accounting, to implement a unified IP strategy more smoothly for Yokogawa Group. Between 2009 to 2019, Mr Tanaka was with Sony Corporation and Sony Corporation of America, chiefly responsible for utilizing patent assets, managing teams responsible for patent licensing, including joint licensing programmes. Before Sony, Mr Tanaka was with NEC Corporation where he worked on patent licensing and prosecution. Mr Tanaka is a Japanese patent attorney, holding a BS and an MS from Kyoto University.