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Linguistic justice in IP policies: evaluating the fairness of the language regime of the European Patent Office

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Abstract

Alternative intellectual property laws relating to the use of languages in IP organisations can result in an asymmetric distribution of costs of patenting between innovators. We present a framework for the characterisation and evaluation of the fairness of the language regime of the European Patent Office (EPO), which is currently based on three official languages: English, French and German. We estimate that the costs of access to patenting procedures borne by English-, French- or German-speaking applicants are at least 30 % lower than those borne by European applicants whose first language is not one of the current official languages of the EPO. In order to correct language-related cost asymmetries, we explore two possible alternative language regimes. In both cases, we introduce a centralised system of financial compensation that covers translation costs borne by European applicants whose first language is not one of the official languages of the EPO. In the first alternative, financial compensation is covered by savings on current translation costs at the granting stage. In the second alternative, the number of official languages is increased to five and financial compensation is funded by an increase in filing fee and by partial savings on translation costs at the granting stage. We show that both alternatives could substantially reduce language-related costs asymmetries among European applicants. In addition, we show that the five-language alternative would reduce the global costs of access to patenting procedures borne by all European applicants. Thus, more multilingualism can be cheaper than less multilingualism, provided that “implicit costs” are taken into account. We conclude discussing under which conditions the alternative language regimes proposed could have a positive impact on the effectiveness and the cost-effectiveness of the EPO language regime.

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Notes

  1. The European patent should not be confused with the EU unitary patent (once “community patent”). At the moment of writing, a unitary patent is still not a reality, although considerable progresses have been made in December 2012. Therefore, it is not discussed here. Lack of unanimous consensus on the language regime of the EU patent has been one of the main obstacles against the development of a common EU patent throughout history (European Commission 2011, Volpe 2011).

  2. The LA, signed in London in 2000, came into force in 2008. Today 18 states have ratified or accessed the LA. Ireland has recently adapted its national law in accordance with the LA and a ratification is expected in the future. Only nine states have decided to completely dispense with translation validation requirements (namely, Ireland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Monaco, Switzerland, and the UK). The remaining nine countries still request at least a translation of the claims into their official language, and sometimes a full translation into English.

  3. See Van Pottelsberghe and François (2009: 338-347) and Roland Berger (2004) for a review.

  4. Often measuring implicit costs is not straightforward as translation costs are often included in intermediation costs paid to patent attorneys (Van Pottelsberghe and François 2009: 339).

  5. We also do not discuss here procedures for “Euro-PCT applications”, that is, international patent applications filed according to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) that enter into the regional phase with the EPO.

  6. On this point and on the effects of the LA on validation costs, see Roland Berger (2004), Guellec and Van Pottelsberghe (2007), Harhoff et al. (2009), Van Pottelsberghe and Mejer (2010).

  7. See Doherty and O'Brien (2012) for a review of different experiments comparing the efficiency and user satisfaction of MT with human translation. See also WIPO (2008) for a critique to MT in IP policies, and Marlies (2012) for a comparison between MT and human transation of patents at the EPO.

  8. This applies only if an application contains less than 16 claims and for EP direct—not online applications.

  9. The estimates of the average number of pages of a European patent application for the period considered varies according to authors: 21,45 (Van Zeebroeck et al. 2009: 1008); 22,5 (Archontopoulos et al. 2007: 126), 25 (Van Pottelsberghe and Mejer 2010: 230), of which 15 for description and 4 for claims and 6 for drawings, and 23 (Roland Berger 2004: 81) of which 15 for description and 4 for claims. In this article, we adopt the prudent estimates of Van Pottelsberghe and Mejer and Roland Berger, which have already been used in the accompanying documents to a proposal for a Council regulation implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection with regard to the applicable translation arrangements (European Commission 2011). We include in our computation of admission costs only one page of drawings and explanatory notes. Considering the increase in the average number of pages of patent applications pointed out by Van Zeebroeck et al. (2009), thererfore, our estimates should be viewed as a lower bound.

  10. The “EPC 2000 reform” entered into force in 2007. Before that year, it was not possible to file “Euro-direct” patent applications in languages that are not one of official languages of the EPC Contracting States (e.g. Japanese). A different rule was in force for “Euro-PCT” applications.

  11. At the moment of publication of international patent applications in one of the ten PCT languages of publication, only abstracts and titles are translated into the two working languages of the WIPO International Bureau, namely, English and French.

  12. Working with a year average based on more than one year is analytically more robust than relying on one year only. On the other hand, the time span considered should not be too high. Five years seems to be a reasonable choice.

  13. If not specified differently, figures in this article have been computed by the authors using the EPO statistical database. The authors gratefully thank the EPO statistical service for access to these data.

  14. Not all applications enter the examination phase, as withdrawals after the publication of the European Search Report are not uncommon. Hence, many companies would not receive EUR 483 of compensation and saving could be used to increase the lump-sum transfer in favour of companies that enter the examination phase. Thus, EUR 483 must be regarded as a lower bound.

  15. In order to avoid frauds, the EPO should strengthen controls already in force regarding the current eligibility to reductions in fees.

  16. In 2009, 19% of the EPO staff with grade A was Belgian, Dutch or Italian (EPO 2010a: 47).

  17. We keep the current reduction in fees available at the EPO, as shown in scenario 1. The total cost of EUR 7,349 is equal to (5,500 + 1,700 + 483) − (40 + 311).

  18. On multilingual practices on the workplace see, among others, Grin et al. (2010) and several contributions in Lüdi (2010).

  19. One of the reviewers has suggested that many applicants file directly in English as they plan to file a patent application with the US Patent and Trademarks Office. Hence, a translation into English is needed anyway. This can be true, but it does not provide solid guidelines for the EPO language policy. First, not all firms are necessarily interested in patenting their inventions in the US (at least not at the same time they file an application with the EPO). Second, the possibility to use one's first language at the application stage makes it possible to postpone translation costs for several months. Third, postponing translation costs contributes to minimize the risk of deadweight loss of initial translation costs if the application is eventually rejected by the EPO.

  20. In order to file an international patent application through the PCT system, Italian, Swedish and Dutch applicants must translate their international patent application in one of the ten languages of publication of the PCT. When the international application enters into the regional phase with the EPO, they usually file directly the application already translated into one of the EPO’s procedural languages, typically English.

  21. Cf. Gazzola (2011) for a more extensive discussion on the use of languages in European patenting procedures.

  22. Patent offices are largely self-financing. The bulk of the EPO’s revenue comes from procedural fees related to patent grant process and national renewal fees for granted patents (e.g. EPO 2010b: 33).

  23. Recall that Article 133 of the EPC (Chapter III Representation) states that “no person [having his residence or principal place of business in a Contracting state] shall be compelled to be represented by a professional representative in proceedings established by this Convention”. In other words, any European inventor (not necessarily fluent in one of the three official languages of the EPO) can file an application with the EPO without necessarily relying on patent attorneys capable of drafting applications in a foreign language.

Abbreviations

CLIR:

Cross-lingual information retrieval

EPC:

European Patent Convention

EPO:

European Patent Office

LA:

London agreement

MT:

Machine translation

PATLIB:

Patent libraries

PCT:

Patent cooperation treaty

SME:

Small and medium enterprise

WIPO:

World intellectual property organisation

IP:

Intellectual property

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Acknowledgments

The financial support from the Swiss National Scientific Foundation (SNSF) is gratefully acknowledged (Project number PBGEP1-136158). The authors wish to thank François Grin, José-Ramón Uriarte, François Vaillancourt, Bengt-Arne Wickström, and the anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors and all interpretations are all our own.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Finanzwissenschaft, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Spandauer Straße 1, 10178, Berlin, Germany

    Michele Gazzola

  2. Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (IRIS), Paris, 13, rue Malebranche, 75005, Paris, France

    Alessia Volpe

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  1. Michele Gazzola
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  2. Alessia Volpe
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Correspondence to Michele Gazzola.

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Gazzola, M., Volpe, A. Linguistic justice in IP policies: evaluating the fairness of the language regime of the European Patent Office. Eur J Law Econ 38, 47–70 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-013-9394-z

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