Due to government efforts, China has recently seen a boom in the filing of patent applications. This is important information for both native and foreign innovators looking to protect their ideas in the country and abroad. Luckily, filing has been made slightly easier by the help of Machine Translation in the existing patent search phase – but don’t be tricked into thinking Machine Translation will replace human legal translation providers in all of the English and Chinese patent translation process…
Patent Filing Boom in China
There are many preconceptions about China when it comes to patents, though much has changed in the past several years.
The Chinese government is now increasingly encouraging its citizens to file for patents. Around 5 years ago the country set a goal of 2 million patents by 2015. Luckily, filing for a patent in China is relatively easy and cheap for a single individual, due to its two tiered system.
This has led to an increase in the numbers of patents filed over the years. In 2015 China lead the world in most patent applications filed at 1,101,864, with 1,010,406 alone being invention patents from natives. All together, the total number of invention, utility, and design patents filed in China in 2015 far exceeded their 2 million goal.
China also saw 42,154 applications filed outside of their boarders.
To put this in perspective, the countries accounting for the second and third highest volume of patents filed in 2015 were the United States and Japan at 526,296 and 454,285 respectively.
Many of these Chinese patents were related to the fields of telecoms, computing, semiconductors, and medical technology.
Machine Translation is the New Gateway for Patent Filing
In February of 2012, as a joint effort between the European Patent Office (EPO) and the State Intellectual Property Office of People’s Republic of China (SIPO), a Chinese-English free machine translation service was created for translating patents.
With more recent advances in machine translation services, it is now possible to perform a Chinese patent search for existing, registered patents easily (and visa versa for Chinese residents searching for patents filed in the United States or Europe).
But machine translation is far from perfect and is not an acceptable substitute for human translation when filing most patents abroad (in the same way that machine translation is not enough for legal cases).
Some patents, such as those describing simple mechanical inventions, may be translated somewhat acceptably by machine translation as they are more straightforward. However for more complex patents, this is not the case and professional English or Chinese patent translation will still be required.
Moreover, the need for professional patent translation may also depend on the particular language pair. Machine translation from English to Chinese and Chinese to English is less reliable than between Latin-based European languages for example. This is due to the vast linguistic differences of the former.
Humans Beat Machines for English and Chinese Patent Translation
For U.S business or individuals looking to file a patent in China, or visa versa, the process begins by conducting a search for existing patents with the help of machine translation.
If a similar patent is not found, the process continues on to the filing of a legal application – which for English speaking filers to China, and Chinese filers to English speaking Countries, is best approached using a professional translator.
The reason for this is that legal document translation demands extreme accuracy in wording and use of appropriate legal terminology in the chosen languages. In the case of Chinese patent translation, this is especially challenging, because sentence structure and grammar differ drastically between English and Chinese. The format of patents written in Mandarin Chinese characters is also quite different.
The English written version must be translated and formatted in such a way that takes these factors into account. Mandarin patents likewise need to be adapted to fit the English style, while ensuring the translation still correlates to the original document’s language.
While machine translation is a helpful tool for U.S. and Chinese companies that are interested in searching for existing patents, successful filing of patent applications still requires a professional English or Chinese patent translation. The translator must not only possess skills in translating between English and Chinese (or visa versa), but also a strong background in the field of patent law and the specific requirements for filing in China and the United States.
However, in combination machine translation and translation by a professional can ensure that the process of searching and filing patents in China and the United States is successful.
Learn More About Our Patent Translation Services
Learn more about our Chinese Translation and Chinese Interpreter services
Sources
- http://beijing.usembassy-china.org.cn/iprpatent.html
- http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2016/article_0017.html
- http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38082210
- https://www.quora.com/If-something-has-been-patented-in-US-can-I-go-to-China-and-patent-it-if-it-hasnt-been-patented-in-China-yet
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