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Commission proposes auto-translation for pan-EU patents


Computer-generated translations should be used to cut the cost of registering a patent that covers the EU's 27 member states, the European Commission has said.

The Commission has published a proposed solution to the problem of how to make patents cover the EU's disparate linguistic landscape while keeping translation costs down.

It has said that an EU-wide patent should be granted on its publication in one of the European Patent Office (EPO)'s three official languages: English, French or German. The patent's claims – a subset of the whole patent – will be translated into all three languages. The inventor will have to commission those translations, but computers can be used to generate approximate translations of the claims in the 20 other languages spoken across the EU.

That will be enough to ensure that the patent is in force across Europe under the Commission's plans. If there is a dispute about the patent then the person or organisation that registered the patent will have to pay for it to be translated into the language of the country in which the dispute has arisen.

"The patent proprietor may be required to provide further translations at his or her own expense," said a Commission statement. "For example, the proprietor may have to supply a copy of the patent into the language of an alleged infringer, or into the language of the court proceedings when this is different from the language of the patent."

At the moment EPO patents can only be in force in a country if they have been translated into that country's language. The Commission's plan would replace those official translations with computer-generated ones.

"High quality machine translations of EU patents into all official languages of the EU should be made available," said the Commission statement. "Inventors in Europe will therefore have better access to technical information on patents in their native language."

The plan is part of the European Commission's aim to create a single EU patent structure. EPO patents only apply in the countries stipulated by whoever registered the patent and a dispute settlement from one country does not apply in another.

"For Europe to be competitive globally, we need to encourage innovation. That's not the case today – it is far too expensive and complicated to obtain a patent," said Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier. "An EU Patent equally valid in all EU countries is crucial to stimulate research and development and will drive future growth."

"Today's proposal – the last element of the patent reform package – is good news for innovators across Europe, in particular small businesses. I now hope that Member States will act quickly to ensure the EU patent becomes a reality," said Barnier.

"This is the most sensible approach to the translation issue I've seen," said David Bloom, a specialist in life sciences law at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM. "It has become clear over the last few years that there has been a real urgency about trying to resolve the issue of EU patent translation costs."

"I think the cost of translation is a key hurdle, and this plan appears to overcome a lot of the issues that have arisen in the past and certainly keeps the costs down for patentees," said Bloom.

Bloom said, though, that even if the Commission's plan solves the translation problem it will have to solve another problem – that of how to resolve patent disputes on an EU-wide basis.

"What they are looking to establish is the right for a patentee to enforce patent rights across the whole of the EU so that they can bring an action in one member state and, if successful, make that effective throughout Europe," said Bloom. "At the moment you would have to take an action in each member state. To have a truly EU-wide patent system you need an EU-wide enforcement system."

The European Commission and EU ministers agreed in December on a system for hearing patent disputes that would settle cases on an EU-wide basis.

"The current proposal is for patent holders to take action where the actual or threatened infringement has or may occur, and there could be appeals to a central European court," said Bloom. "Once these problems are solved then this will become a reality. But over the last 40 years there have been a number of proposals that have come and gone, so even though progress has been made with this announcement it  may be premature to be talking about the birth of an EU patent system."

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