European Patent Office Launches Patent Translate
On 29 February 2012, European Patent Office (EPO) launched on its website a free automated translation service Patent Translate to help remove language barriers to patent documents.
Patent Translate is developed in collaboration with Google. Using the internet company's technology, the service currently offers translation in six language pairs - from and into English for French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish, thereby covering about 90% of all patents in Europe.
The program intends to gradually extend to the remaining 21 languages of the EPO member states, plus Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian by the end of 2014.
