[emeritus]

My understanding is the Philips always were strong in intellectual property and encouraged innovation.. Their patent department was run as a business unit that filed, and paid the prosecution costs of, patents for any worthwhile inventions made by the subsidiary companies, licenced the inventions to third parties, and collected the royalties. A different philosophy from GEC and Marconi, where individual businesses had to pay the costs of getting their patents out of their budgets, although they did (usually) benefit from any royalty income.