EU Patent - Background Note On Machine Translations

According to the present Document, the proposal for a Council Regulation on the translation arrangements for the EU patent recognises the importance of providing patent information through machine translations. The proposal identifies machine translations as one of the accompanying measures to be established, together with the creation of the EU patent. Discussions on the proposal at the Council Working Parties, of 14 and 28 July 2010, showed that a number of Member States believe that the availability of machine translations is one of the major elements in the overall translation regime for the EU patent. They have requested further clarifications on the current state of play of the programme, as well as an outline of the possible ways forward.

Present Document tells us that a specialised machine translation programme for patent documents has already been launched by the Europe Patent Office (EPO) in 2004. The overall objective of this programme is providing an automated translation service of sufficient quality to make the technical content of patent documents understandable to a technically qualified person. The programme is said to have two dimensions – external and internal. It is first of all intended to foster the dissemination of patent information and technical knowledge to the users of the patent system. Internally, the programme facilitates, speeds up and in some cases enables the process of search for relevant prior art, by the EPO examiners, in multiple languages. In addition, the programme is also seen as a contribution by the EPO to the efforts of creating a single patent for the territory of the EU. The EPO supports the creation of a simplified and cost-effective EU patent and machine translations are seen as one of the key elements in achieving this. The single EU patent thus creates further incentives for the development of the machine translation programme at the EPO. According to the Document, the proposal for a Council Regulation on the translation arrangements for the EU patent implies that machine translations for the EU patent would be based on the machine translation programme currently developed by the EPO. It is specified that whereas, currently, machine translations are available in a limited number of languages, the programme would need to be extended to cover all EU official languages. To this end, the Commission should cooperate with and support the efforts of the EPO to roll out the existing programme.

The above-identified Document continues to assert that the machine translation programme of the EPO already ensures the availability of customised translations of patent specifications in a limited number of languages. The first language pairs German-English / English-German and Spanish-English / English-Spanish became available in 2008. Since 2009, French-English / English-French and Italian-English / English-Italian are also available but are still being improved. The existing language pairs already receive a significant number of machine translation requests. On the basis of the data collected in the first quarter of 2010, the total number of requests for machine translations in all language pairs should reach more than 1 million requests per year. Currently work is under way to provide subsequent language pairs for Swedish-English / English-Swedish and Portuguese-English / English-Portuguese. Further work is also planned for Dutch, Finnish, Greek and Romanian. The Document furthermore discloses to the public that, on 26 August 2010, a document on an extended comprehensive language technology services cooperation programme was submitted for a decision by EPO Administrative Council in October 2010. If approved, the programme would be launched on November 01, 2010, for the duration of four years. In particular, this foresees the acceleration of the development of the language technology services, including a viable machine translation programme as envisaged in the Commission proposal on the translation arrangements for the EU patent. The document emphasizes that, based on previous experience, future work will be a collaborative exercise between various players. The EPO will focus on areas where it can add value and will collaborate with partners both from the public and private sectors (for example, national patent offices, IT service providers) in their respective areas of expertise.

Details of the languages where machine translation is available or is planned has been drawn up in the EPO Status Report on the European Machine Translation Programme in EPO Administrative Council Document No. CA/T 6/09, and there appears to exist an EPO Administrative Council document on Cooperation programme on European language technology services for patents under No. CA/29/10. Both Documents are not available to the general public up to now.

I think it would be adequate to publish both AC Documents right now. There appears to be no legitimate reason to keep the discussion on machine translations locked up behind closed doors.

Moreover, it might be a good idea to present some results of the technical progress achieved in machine translation to the general public. For example, the EPO might set up a web page where one can paste a certain text portion e.g. from a patent claim in, say, French, and let it be translated into English or German. It might be fun to tinker a bit around with such tool in order to research potency as well as limitations thereof.