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We have organized the main patent cases applied and registered within the last five years regarding the latest ESG (Environment, Society, Governance) related software technology in Japan. The table below summarizes the patent applicant, publication/registration number, title and abstract of the invention, followed by detailed explanations of representative cases of particular note.
| Applicant (company/individual) | Publication/registration number | Name of invention | Technology overview (Features and effects of ESG software) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABeam Consulting Co., Ltd. | Patent No. 6866054 (JP 2021-9696) | Systems, methods, and programs to support ESG management | A management support system that collects and integrates a company's ESG data (environmental, social, and governance indicators) and financial data from internal core systems, and visualizes the correlation analysis results between the two using graphs and scatter diagrams to understand the relationship between ESG and business performance. Visualize the relationship between ESG initiatives and sales and profits to support sustainable management decision-making. |
| ISD Inc. (Korea) | Patent No. 7090936 (JP 2020-526369) | ESG-based corporate evaluation device and its operating method (*translation) | Technology that automatically collects and analyzes news articles on the Internet, categorizes article content into environmental, social, and governance perspectives, and calculates ESG scores for each company. Using AI and language processing, we extract ESG-related information from a large amount of news and provide objective ESG evaluations of companies in real time. We provide unified evaluation indicators based on publicly available information to address the issues of ESG evaluation standards that have traditionally differed from evaluation organization to evaluation organization. |
| estoma Co., Ltd. (Tokyo) | Unpublished publication 2025-039443 | AI automatic response service compatible with ESG rating agencies (name: undisclosed) | A service in which our unique AI reads the contents of a company's integrated report or sustainability page and automatically generates answers to a large number of ESG survey questionnaires sent to listed companies on the ESG information integrated management cloud. The person in charge only needs to upload the questionnaire and revise and confirm the AI answers, greatly increasing the efficiency of response work and eliminating the need for individual personnel. Patent applications and services will begin in 2024. |
*In addition to the above, patent applications related to technology specialized in environmental monitoring and visualization and analysis of ESG data are increasing. For example, aiESG, a startup from Kyushu University, launched the world's first service in 2022 that can evaluate ESG risks of the entire supply chain on a product/service basis, and provides technology that uses proprietary AI to visualize and quantify approximately 3,200 items such as greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, and the working environment. Below, we will explain representative patent cases in detail from the perspective of environmental monitoring and data visualization.
Data visualization related: Integrated management tool that visualizes the correlation between ESG and finance (Patent No. 6866054)
A representative example in the field of ESG data visualization and analysis is ABeam Consulting's "ESG Management Support System." The company applied for a patent in 2020, and through this invention, which was published in 2021 and registered in 2022, it provides a cloud platform that centrally manages and analyzes a company's internal ESG information and financial information.
This system automatically collects ESG data in each of the environmental, social, and governance categories (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, ratio of female managers, ratio of outside directors, etc.) and financial data such as sales and operating income from a company's core business systems and stores them in a database. What is unique about it is that it has the ability to perform a correlation analysis between these ESG indicators and financial indicators, and to visualize the results in graphs and scatter plots. For example, you can understand the relationship between ESG initiatives and management performance at a glance by plotting the "correlation between CO2 emissions reduction rate and operating profit growth rate" or displaying graphs of "trends in employee satisfaction scores and turnover rate."
With this invention, management will be able to quantitatively verify and track the impact of ESG activities on corporate value. You can expect to accelerate the PDCA cycle by comparing your company's position with the industry average on a visualized scatter diagram, identifying weak ESG items, and utilizing them in improvement measures. Additionally, since data is managed collectively on an integrated platform, CSR reporting KPIs and financial KPIs, which were previously managed separately, can now be monitored on the same platform, leading to more efficient disclosure work. The patent publication also states that the relationship between ESG and business performance can be intuitively shown by displaying the results of a correlation analysis in a graph, and it can be said to be an innovative software that "visualizes" ESG management and aids in decision-making.
Environmental monitoring related: ESG risk assessment system using news analysis (Patent No. 7090936)
An ESG software patent related to environmental monitoring that has attracted attention in recent years is ISD Inc.'s "ESG-based corporate evaluation device." The company has developed technology to evaluate a company's ESG performance through news event analysis using AI, and has obtained patents in various countries including Japan.
This system first crawls and collects a huge amount of news articles on the Internet, and performs morphological analysis and language vectorization using natural language processing. After identifying which company each article is about, similar articles are grouped together through clustering, AI determines whether topics are related to the environment, society, or governance. For example, news about ``factory wastewater accidents'' is categorized as environment, and news about ``human rights due diligence'' is categorized as society. In this way, we analyze the amount and content of news belonging to each ESG field and automatically calculate ESG evaluation scores for each company.
The technical feature of this invention is that it utilizes not only sustainability reports from companies but also objective information sources from outside (news). AI can capture daily updated environmental and social risk information in real time and reflect it in the score, making it possible to perform ESG risk assessments that are more timely and accurate than traditional annual assessments. Additionally, it can automate the monitoring of tens of thousands of articles from hundreds of companies, which would be difficult to do manually, and is useful for investors in that it provides indexes that allow them to compare companies. In fact, the patent literature also emphasizes that ``the evaluation results have a high degree of objectivity,'' and it can be said that this invention contributes to improving the transparency of ESG evaluations.
Other notable cases: ESG information response support using AI (Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2025-039443)
In addition to the above, patents that contribute to work efficiency have appeared in the ESG software field. For example, an invention filed by startup company estoma in 2024 proposes a cloud service that uses AI to automatically create ESG questionnaires for listed companies to respond to. This service uses AI to read a company's integrated reports and web-disclosed information, and generate optimal answers to questionnaires sent by ESG rating agencies such as MSCI and CDP. Using our proprietary AI algorithm, which is a patented technology, we have significantly reduced the labor involved in handling questionnaires, which would have been cumbersome to do manually, reducing the workload of staff and standardizing the quality of answers. Efforts like this to use software to assist ESG information disclosure tasks, which tend to be individualized, are also an important technological trend in recent years.
As mentioned above, the number of patent applications related to ESG software is increasing in Japan, and technological innovation is progressing in various fields such as environmental data monitoring and visualization, and analysis support using AI. Each case supports corporate sustainability management from a technical perspective, and it is expected that applications for related inventions will continue to be actively filed in line with the trend of emphasizing ESG. By paying close attention to each company's patent trends, you will be able to grasp the latest technology trends in the ESG software field and use this as a reference when selecting future investment opportunities and collaboration partners.
Information sources: Japan Patent Office Public Patent Publication (J-PlatPat), patent publications (English translation), corporate press releases, specialized articles, etc.
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AUTHOR
Takefumi SUGIURA （杉浦 健文）
EVORIX Intellectual Property Law Firm Managing Patent Attorney
Supports clients across IT, manufacturing, startups, fashion, and medical industries, covering patent, trademark, design, and copyright filings through trials and infringement litigation. Specialized in IP strategy for AI, IoT, Web3, and FinTech. Member of the Japan Patent Attorneys Association (JPAA), Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APAA), and Japan Trademark Association (JTA).
