Wednesday, August 8, 2007 Patent filing in Europe-can you do it alone? As any private inventor knows, filing a patent in Europe takes considerable time and costs a significant amount of money. Due to the European Patent Office (EPO) regulations, a patent must be filed in each member state for local protection. Since many of the EU member countries require that the patent be filed in its official language (which requires translation of the patent), and since the number of EU member countries is growing, local filing expenses can be staggering. Typically, a private investor will rely on a patent firm for the filing of a European Patent. The patent firm outsources the translation work to a translation firm or to freelance translators. The translation is usually marked up by the patent firm, who acts as a middleman in this regard without providing much added value. National fees for validating patents within the EU are not expensive and the filing work is fairly straightforward. All relevant information needed for filing can be found on http://www.epo.org. What drives the cost of national filing up is the money that attorneys charge for filing. These costs should not be expensive as the patent has already been prosecuted and issued by the EPO and no further national prosecution is required. As a rule, translation costs more than the filing fees (including attorney costs). Additionally, an EU resident does not need an agent in most national states and can download and complete the patent forms for each country they wish to validate the patent. That means all they have to pay for is translation. Having an attorney is good for understanding the process better, but any inventor that is on a tight budget should consider filing themselves if they can complete the forms. The client can always get a local attorney down the road if they need one. GTS has worked with several private inventors and has translated their patents into as many of 10 languages for the local filing. We have also provided them with assistance with filing, or have referred them to a patent attorney in Europe for such assistance. If you have a question on national filing in European Union, contact us at info@gts-translation.com. 9:24:25 AM    comment [] © Copyright 2007 Global Translations.

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