As intellectual property, a patent is only useful in the advancement of technology insofar as the information it contains can be shared. Patent translation is a crucial bridge to making valuable technology and innovation available and hence useful to more people and organisations globally. However, since patents are territorial — i.e. they are only effective […]
Patents are a subset of intellectual property, which includes the likes of trademarks, copyrights, industrial designs and other forms of intangible property (i.e. that created in the mind and having no physical form). Therefore, like all types of property, patents also can be considered an asset – something that can be owned and have monetary […]
Through over a decade of translating written opinions of the Searching Authority on patent applications, one of the common objections we see raised by examiners is that of a patent application lacking clarity. A patent application must satisfy Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Article 6, which specifies that: “The claim or claims shall define the matter […]
Shortfalls of machine translation The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) still employs human translators for translating patent documents. They undoubtedly have very good reasons to do so, as do we. Although there is definitely a place for machine translation in this day and age, it is nonetheless just a tool and cannot replace the need […]