EPO & Google Collaboration: Towards the removal of language bar

The cooperation between the European Patent Office and Google, launched less than a year ago, has already started reaping its benefits. With the objective of providing free patent data worldwide, the EPO and Google have started paving the way towards improving accessibility of patent documentation by eliminating language barriers.Based on the technology used by the popular service among internet users from all round the globe, Google Translate, a new service has now appeared on the net – Patent Translate. “Patent Translate enables businesses and innovators to identify relevant patent documents and to translate them into their own language. It also facilitates the implementation of the unitary patent which includes an important chapter on translation” explained Benoit Battistelli, President of the EPO.This translation machine currently enables translation from and to English for French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish, hence addressing approximately 90% of all patents issued in Europe. Patent Translate is also expected to cater for Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian and Norwegian by 2013. Thereafter, by the end of 2014, the translation machine should be operative in respect of all the 28 languages of the EPO member states, together with Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian, resulting in a total of 32 languages.