European Patent: Almost There

European Union governments have been negotiating the issue of a single EU patent for decades. Taking advantage of the fast-track procedure – which came in with the Lisbon Treaty and allows a group of countries to go ahead with EU legislation even when not all 27 member states agree – Ministers met Monday and hammered out a so-called "general approach," which is the governments' position on a European Commission legislative proposal that will create a single patent for the EU. I have discussed this matter previously in this post about the creation of a European patent system.

Italy and Spain fear discrimination because patents would be filed only in English, French or German. The two countries have filed a legal challenge with the European Court of Justice (ECJ), arguing that the new enhanced co-operation procedure should not be used to bring in the patent system. In fact, efforts to get an EU-wide agreement on patents have been blocked for many years by language disputes and the lack of unanimity.

At the moment, the European patent requires validation in each member state, and a full translation of the patent in the official national language. The new single patent system is expected to be in place by 2013, and should cut the current €32,000 it costs to get a patent across the 27 EU countries (€23,000 only for translations) to €2,500 for the 25 countries participating in the project (all but Italy and Spain), and further down to €680 at the end of a 12-year transitional period. In the U.S., a patent filing costs about €1,850.

Implications for the Language Services Industry

This is not good news for LSPs, but companies have been preparing for sometime. In fact, RWS Holdings, the biggest patent translations company in Europe, mentioned in its 2010 Annual Report that "The thrust of our acquisition strategy since 2005 has been to target technical translation businesses which have zero exposure to any developments in the patent field."

Lingtech, the Danish company that developed machine translation solutions for patents into Scandinavian languages, saw its revenues dwindle since the London Agreement and was recently acquired by Kommunicera AB.

But not all is gloom.

• Translations will still be required between English, French, and German, and in some cases into each European language. 
• The expectation is that the number of patents registered in Europe will increase because of the cost savings. So the reduction in number of translations could be offset by the increase in the number of documents filed.
• Asian countries file more and more patents every year. Those patents will need to be translated into European languages for filing. This means that there might be also a shift in the language pairs required for patent translations.

Even though I personally believe that the cost of translation is just a cost of doing business and that respect for linguistic diversity is a core EU value contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, I think that the train has left the station and a Single European Patent will be reality LSPs will have to contend with.

Industry Reacts Negatively to EPO and Google Deal. But Should They?

The EPO (European Patent Office) announced today that it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Google Translate to automatically translate patents into the languages of the 38 countries that it serves.

The immediate response in the social media forums was quite negative, as most reactions involving Google and machine translation of late. But looking closely at the press-release, we see that "the collaboration aims to offer faster and cheaper fit-for-purpose translations of patents for companies, inventors and scientists in Europe."(our emphasis)

What this means is that the goal is to provide good enough translations, not perfect translations. Further in the release, the EPO states that "the partnership with Google to create machine translation tools for patents will help inventors, engineers and R+D teams to retrieve relevant documents efficiently - in their own language - from our wealth of published patent information." This means that the purpose is to allow people to search the EPO database for patents that have been already published, something that falls exactly into Google's expertise: Searchability.And probably something that those professionals already do on their own by copying and pasting information into Google Translate.

As discussed in a previous post, the EU is trying to promote the adoption of a single EU patent system, which is facing some resistance in the European Court of Justice because the court's Advocate General believes that a centralized patent is "incompatible with the treaties" that created the EU.

For Google, this is a bonanza that will provide them with a vast database of quality translations of approximately 1.5 million documents, a number that grows by more than 50,000 new patent grants every year. This means that the quality of Google Translate should improve in several scientific knowledge domains. By definition, patents facilitate and encourage disclosure of innovations into the public domain for the common good. Protection of inventions is achieved by making the information public and not secret. To me, this is a perfect match with Google's stated mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Is this the end of patent translations for LSPs? I don't think so.

Patents are serious business and are worth a lot of money for their holders. Pharmaceutical patents are easily worth billions of dollars over their terms of protection and many lawsuits have been filed because of the interpretation of specific terms. Large organization that file hundreds or thousands of patents every year will not be penny pinching on translations and will still prefer to use the services of specialty LSPs like RWS for filing purposes.

Add to this, the fact that there are other language pairs that are not covered by the EPO/Google deal, and that patents still need to be filed in Japan, China, Brazil, and other countries. Deals like the one announced earlier this year between Asia Online and Lexis-Nexis Univentio can still proliferate, since their goal is to achieve publication quality.

From my point of view, this is a good announcement that proves the growing maturity of Google Translate, which will become a better tool for all its users due to the addition of good content to its database. But Google Translate will continue to be generic tool with good enough results.

Creation of common EU patent system faces setback - Translation Implications

Since May 1, 2008,  the London Agreement, meant to reduce costs relating to the translation of European patents, has been in effect. The London Agreement provides for patent claims to be available in the national language of the states where the European patent is registered, while the description — which represents the bulk of the text of a patent — can be made available in English, French, or German, the official languages of the EPO (European Patent Office).

The argument for the London Agreement was that the cost of translations reduced the incentives for companies to apply for a European patent and, many argued, the situation was a burden on the competitiveness of the European economy, compared to the situation in the United States.

However, according to news from NetworkWorld, the European Court of Justice might put a break on the stated plans of the current EU presidency to  foster a common patent system across the European Union. The court's Advocate General believes that a centralized patent is "incompatible with the treaties" that created the EU, according to a leaked document.

If the European Court of Justice moves forward with this decision, translation companies specializing in Patent Translations will see a return of business in high volumes. Companies like UK publicly-traded RWS and Denmark's Lingtech are set to benefit from this return.  I might even develop a service in this area for Milengo if this ruling materializes.

It always struck me as strange the fact that the EU was promoting a common European Patent, when respect for linguistic diversity is a core EU value. In fact, Article 21 of the ‘Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union’ forbids discrimination on several grounds (specifically including language), while Article 22 guarantees respect for cultural, religious and linguistic diversity.

Let's wait and see how this pans out.