Translation accuracy and dissemination of disclosure of patent information: an analysis of translation and its influence on patent law

How relevant are language and translation to patent law? Patents are closely related to the universality of science, to foreign trade and to the consequences of globalization, including fast and automatic communication enabled by digital tools. Patent rights serve this vast, multilingual, complex global system, owing it reliable solutions. There are examples of patent disputes involving huge profits in fees for translations that extended to more than 100 million words. Translation is not only critical to patent disputes, but to the whole “life” of a patent and to all the international regulations and their internalization in national law. That involves the stages of application, examination and validation; opposition and infringement; and the whole process of patent bargain, with an emphasis on the disclosure of technological information. This research brought a contribution on the roles, features and future perspectives of patent translation and dissemination of disclosure of patent information in patent law. It also brought strong justification to the existence of the patent system, as the advent of quality machine translation universalized the dissemination of disclosure of patent information at the global level.