On October 06, the Belgian EU Presidency has sent a paper to the EU Council which is titled Proposal for a Council Regulation on the translation arrangements for the
European Union patent - Political orientation and which now has been made public as Document 14377/10.
Primarily, the Document re-iterates earlier statements in favour of introduction or machine translation technologies for obtaining cheap patent translations. According to the text, in order to improve access to technical information on patents in local languages for all
users of the patent system in Europe, the timely availability and high quality of machine
translations into all EU languages is an indispensable element of the translation
arrangements of the European Union patent. In order to achieve this, the Presidency concludes, the Commission shall establish a cooperation programme with the EPO in order to ensure the timely availability of machine translations. Moreover, again according to the Document, the Commission shall provide all possible support, in particular financial support for the development and functioning of the system of machine translations at the EPO. It should be included in the draft Regulation on the translation arrangements for the European Union patent that the establishment and the functioning of the machine translation system should be subsidised from the EU budget.
However, not everyone appears to be fully convinced:
"During a transitional period, for EU patents which are not granted in the language customary in the field of international technological research and publications a translation into this language has to be provided by the applicant. Such translations would be important as long as high quality machine translations are not available from all of the three EPO languages into all other EU languages. This translation would be included in the publication of the EU patent specification. It would be for information purposes only and would have no legal effect.
The Council is of the view that even though such an additional translation would result in
supplementary costs for certain proprietors of EU patents, these translations would be of
interest for those companies and third parties who work only in the language customary in the
field of international technological research and publications, as long as the quality of machine
translations from all three EPO languages into all other EU languages is not fit for patent
information purposes."
Well, what is meant with the language customary in the field of international technological research? English, most probably.The translation would be for information purposes only and would have no legal effect. Eh, what? No legal effect? Then surely applicants might be tempted to just include some error-prone machine translation into the description. But, wasn't this measure thought to be valid as long as high quality machine translations are not available from all of the three EPO languages into all other EU languages? Strange games, here.
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