Brussels, 29/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Patent Office (EPO), which issues patents valid on European soil, and the European giant Google are working together to facilitate the translation of patent documents (patent applications, the description of the invention, requirements, etc) into multiple languages, with the EPO having set up a “Patent translate” service based on the technology of the “Google translate” service, the two organisations announced in Brussels on Tuesday 29 February.
Describing the use of Google's translation technology as a “landmark”, the EPO explains that its tool will enable high-quality translations to be made from English into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish, covering around 90% of all patents issued in Europe, and that by the end of 2014, all of the EPO's working languages (28 in total) will be covered, such as Chinese, Russian and Japanese. The idea behind this service is to allow inventors to see whether their projects are already the subject of a patent application or are already patented. (SP/transl.fl)