Product News
Landscape Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Katsuhito Nagatake; hereinafter "Landscape"), which supports database marketing, has acquired an exclusive license for patents related to business cards held by Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Headquarters: Ota-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Yoshinori Yamashita; hereinafter "Ricoh"). This exclusive license allows for the identification and visualization of uncontacted individuals using business card information and external data.
Landscape will begin offering this feature, based on the exclusively licensed patent rights, along with its independently developed "Meishi Shogi" feature for visualizing unacquired business cards, integrated into the business card management tool "uMeishi"*1.
■ About the Exclusive License
The details of the exclusive license acquired by Landscape from Ricoh are as follows.
| Patent Number | Priority Date / Retroactive Date, etc. | Patent Overview |
|---|---|---|
| Patent 6299498 Patent 6614255 |
2014/6/2 | Patent for identifying individuals whose information has not yet been acquired by utilizing business card information and information from other media sources. |
| Patent 6369140 Patent 6683219 |
2014/5/30 | Patent for updating organizational information to distinguish between acquired and unacquired business cards, and outputting data based on the respective status. |
| Patent 6550810 | 2015/3/16 | Patent for visualizing members of segments involved in target transactions within organizational data and visualizing the achievement level of activities for those specific segments. |
* The above patents represent business card management functions that cannot be implemented by anyone other than Landscape or third parties licensed by Landscape.
■ About the Unacquired Business Card Visualization Function, "Meishi Shogi"
"Meishi Shogi" is a feature that arranges client company contacts, including those not yet reached, and internal employees in a layout similar to a Japanese Shogi game record. By utilizing data such as business card view counts and registration numbers, it visualizes communication status through line thickness and color intensity. It enables the identification of key individuals within an organization by project, the determination of the shortest path to contact unreached individuals, and the visual understanding of communication patterns based on departments and job titles.
"Meishi Shogi" is integrated into the business card management tool "uMeishi". (Patent pending)
■ Use Cases for Meishi Shogi
Traditionally, it is often difficult to contact a specific individual without a direct connection. With "uMeishi" equipped with the "Meishi Shogi" function, you can centrally manage not only your own business card exchange history but also various information collected from other sources, such as exhibitions, seminars, document requests, news articles, personnel changes, executive information from securities reports, interview data, and web crawling information. By representing connections through line thickness and color intensity, you can easily identify unreached individuals and determine the connection paths to those you wish to contact.
Furthermore, it is not only configured to facilitate contact through these connection paths, but it also integrates with the corporate attribute data (such as industry and revenue scale) from "LBC*2," Japan's largest corporate master database provided by Landscape, as well as behavioral history (such as purchase/negotiation history and email click history) from CRM/SFA and MA tools via the customer data integration solution "uSonar*3." This allows for a comprehensive understanding of customer status, enabling more efficient sales operations.
■ Future Outlook
Landscape is moving beyond the traditional scope of business card management tools. By integrating with various external data sources at the department and contact level, we aim to centralize information and build an environment that enables our client companies to achieve more efficient sales operations. Furthermore, Landscape will collaborate with Ricoh, which possesses extensive expertise in office services, to propose solutions in the SalesTech domain, starting with the fields related to business cards.
We have received an endorsement from Ricoh regarding the release of Meishi Shogi.
Endorsement from Mr. Tadashi Furushima, Corporate Officer, General Manager of Intellectual Property Division, Ricoh Company, Ltd.
At our company, we aim to not only utilize our patented technologies internally but also actively provide them to companies that can make more effective use of them, thereby returning value to society. This patented technology, which enables the identification of individuals whose business cards have not yet been acquired, was born from the perspective of users who manage many business cards in their sales activities. We believe that its value will be fully realized by being incorporated into Meishi Shogi. We welcome Landscape's decision to market Meishi Shogi, which adopts our patented technology.
*1: About the Business Card Management Tool uMeishi
This is a business card management application that utilizes LBC, Japan's largest corporate master database with 8.2 million locations. It is the industry's first business card management tool that instantly corrects and registers data simply by taking a photo of a business card with a smartphone. It also provides a feature that automatically appends detailed corporate attributes.
https://meishisonar.jp/
*2: About the Corporate Master Database LBC
LBC is a corporate database built by Landscape that assigns an 11-digit management code to approximately 8.2 million business locations across Japan. LBC allows for the understanding of not only corporate attributes such as corporate registration numbers, industry types, and sales scale, but also capital relationships between parent and subsidiary companies, as well as head office and branch office relationships, through its corporate code system.
https://usonar.co.jp/service/lbc/
*3: About the Customer Data Integration Solution uSonar
uSonar is a cloud-based data integration tool that allows for the consolidation and management of various information related to customers. It incorporates Landscape's long-cultivated know-how in cleansing data of various formats, as well as the LBC corporate master database of 8.2 million locations built by our company.
https://usonar.co.jp/service/usonar/
*Company names and product names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
*Meishi Shogi was a feature included in Side Sonar (new subscriptions ended in February 2025), which integrated with uMeishi; therefore, it is no longer available for new subscriptions. We are currently considering inheriting this feature in other applications. Please contact us if you have any requests.
*uMeishi service was terminated in August 2025. The business card management application currently provided is mSonar, which features significantly enhanced functionality.
