The challenges of patent translation

Hundreds of thousands of patents are applied for every year, and their translation is an essential requirement forvalidation at an international level.. Nonetheless, there are very few translators who specialize in this field. The reason may be the difficulty that the translation of this type of text entails..

When applying for a patent at international offices, a translation into a language other than the original document will always be required..

After filing a patent application in Spain, its owner can seek to protect their invention in other member countries of the Paris Union Convention or of the World Trade Organization. Do do so, there is a period of 12 months from the date of the patent application in Spain, to exercise the right of priority and present it in other countries.

By exercising the priority right, the date of submission of these applications abroad will have the same date of submission as the application in Spain, which is known as the “priority date”..

Applicants may submit applications with the effects of presentation in several countries at the same time through the European route, through the European Patent Office (EPO), and the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

When opting for the European route, applicants must translate their patents into one of the three official languages ​​of the European Patent Office: English, French and German. All documents related to the patent application must be translated by a specialized professional.

The documentation for registering a patent is extensive. The documents that are required for this procedure, and others related to patent management and that must be translated, include the following::

• Patent specification (Descriptive report and Claims).
• International search reports.
• Written Opinions of Patent Examiners.
• “Expert Opinions”, Technical Reports or Expert Reports.
• Communications and notifications issued by patent offices.
• Replies, petitions and requests addressed to patent offices.
• License agreements and assignments of patent rights.

Why choose a professional specialized in patent translation?

As we said, there are very few translators specialized in patent translation. For translators, from the linguistic point of view, a patent fascicle is a trans-behavioral text with a binding argumentative and persuasive function..

This implies that they set forth, coherently and logically, justifications or reasons provided by the applicant to convince the competent authority that their patent is unique and deserves to be recognized as such.

The clarity, accuracy and relevance of these arguments has a significant bearing on the approval of the patent,, hence its binding nature.

The main challenge in patent translation lies in the abundance of scientific and technical terminology due to its multidisciplinary nature..

The translator will have to consult an enormous amount of documentation to check whether or not the arguments, reasons and justifications for the registration of the patent are conveyed..

Very often the translator will have to resort to other related patents to verify if the specifications really make it unique and, therefore, justify its viable recognition.

Another challenge is that these are documents of a legal nature, so it is important to understand how a patent is drafted to produce a good translation.

Correct equivalents must be used, paying attention to aspects such as numbering and dependency of claims, the omission of which could jeopardize the scope of legal protection.

From experience, we venture to say that the quality of the translation is a determining factor in patent processing, and even for approval.

Hence the importance of relying on a professional specialized in translating the necessary documentation for processing patent applications.. At Artifact Translations we have translators specialized in patents in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. More than 10 Years of experience guarantee our work in this specialty.

If you have any questions about the translation of documents for patent management, you can send us the text so that we can give you a personalized quote with a guaranteed delivery date.. This is our quote request form.