Patent Quality Starts with (Chinese) Patent Searching

According to the December 2007 issue of Patent Information News, the European Patent Office has started a pilot project aimed at translating manually the abstracts and claims of Chinese utility documents in certain technical fields in order to establish the cost-effectiveness of human translation and identify quality issues. "Assuming the pilot was successful, a tender for a full-scale human translation project would be launched in 2008. . . . Initial estimates had resulted in a figure of some EUR 15m per year, for the translation of claims alone."

Ruud Peters, CEO of Philips Intellectual Property and Standards, reportedly summarised the issue at an October conference in just six words: "Industry needs reliable, complete patent information." He also added that "patent quality should start with a focus on high quality search," and that "missing out the increasingly large collection of Chinese prior art is inconsistent with that drive."