Xerox’s R&D drives innovation and customer value by:
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Creating new
differentiated products and services. |
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Enabling cost
competitiveness through disruptive products and services. |
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Enabling new ways to serve
customers. |
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Creating new business
opportunities to drive future growth by reaching out to new customers. |
To ensure our success, we have aligned our R&D investment
portfolio with our strategic planks: leading the color transition,
enabling the “New Business of Printing,” and enhancing customer value
through services. 2006 R&D spending focused primarily on the
development of high-end business applications to drive the “New
Business of Printing,” on extending our color capabilities, and on
lower-cost platforms and customer productivity enablers that drive the
digitization of the office.
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The
Xerox iGen3, an advanced next-generation digital printing press
that produces photographic-quality prints indistinguishable from
offset, and Xerox’s proprietary Solid Ink technology for the office are
examples of the type of breakthrough technology we developed and that
we expect will drive future growth. We include in our R, D&E
expenses our sustaining engineering expenses, which are the hardware
engineering and software development costs we incur after we launch a
product.
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Patents, Trademarks and Licenses
We are a technology company. With our Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center (“PARC”) subsidiary, we were awarded nearly 560 U.S. utility
patents in 2006. We were ranked 39th on the list of
companies that were
awarded the most U.S. patents during the year and would have been
ranked 36th with the inclusion of PARC patents. With our
research
partner, Fuji Xerox, we were awarded over 800 U.S. utility patents in
2006. Our patent portfolio evolves as new patents are awarded to us and
as older patents expire. As of December 31, 2006, we held approximately
8,300 design and utility U.S. patents. These patents expire at various
dates up to 20 years or more from their original filing dates. While we
believe that our portfolio of patents and applications has value, in
general no single patent is essential to our business or any individual
segment. In addition, any of our proprietary rights could be
challenged, invalidated or circumvented, or may not provide significant
competitive advantages.