“Unlocking Technological Information: WIPO’s New Tools for Patent Translation and Data Mining”

Unlocking the Wealth of Information in Patent Documents

Patent documents are a treasure trove of technological information and business intelligence. The patent system, designed to recognize and reward inventors, also serves to make this wealth of information available to the public, spurring new innovations. WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) has developed new tools and services to help innovators and companies mine this information to support their research or business goals. In 2016, WIPO launched two new tools to make it easier to search and understand the vast volume of patent information generated across the globe in various languages.

WIPO Translate: A Ground-breaking Translation Tool for Patent Documents

WIPO Translate is a revolutionary translation tool for patent documents. It uses artificial intelligence to unlock a wealth of previously inaccessible technological information. The latest version of WIPO Translate, unveiled in late October 2016, employs neural machine translation (NMT) technology to provide innovators with the highest-quality service for accessing information about new technologies.

“One of the aims of the patent system is to make technology available,” explains WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. “Language is often a barrier to achieving that aim universally.” WIPO Translate is a significant step forward in overcoming this barrier. It uses cutting-edge neural machine translation technology to convert highly technical patent documents into a second language in a style and syntax that closely mirrors common usage.

Emphasis on East Asian Languages

The neural version of WIPO Translate complements WIPO’s existing statistical machine-based translation tools. It is currently available in beta mode for translations from Chinese to English, with English to Chinese translation capability to be rolled out shortly. This language pairing was prioritized due to the high level of patenting activity in China, which accounted for around 15 percent of global patenting activity in 2015. WIPO plans to extend WIPO Translate NMT to patent applications in Japanese, Korean, and French, with other languages to follow soon.

How to Use WIPO Translate

WIPO Translate is free of charge and available through WIPO’s PATENSCOPE database. To translate a text, simply copy and paste the text you want to translate into the “Text to be translated” box, select the language you require, and press the “Translate” button or click the “WIPO Translate” button within PATENSCOPE search results. The required text is translated instantly.

Patent Searches for Chemistry and Pharmacology Made Easy

Another new development allows users to mine chemical or pharmacological data from the patent documents contained in PATENTSCOPE. PATENSCOPE’s new chemical structure search functionality makes patent searches in the fields of chemistry and pharmacology much easier. It increases the searchability of patent documents, enabling users to search by the name of chemical compounds or by their structure as outlined in drawings embedded in patent applications or patents.

Main Beneficiaries

PATENTSCOPE’s new chemical structure search function will benefit patent examiners and IP professionals, especially those operating in countries with less developed IP services. It will help improve the quality of patent searches of prior art to determine patentability and will strengthen the validity of the patents that are granted. The new search facility will also help IP offices in developing countries handle queries about the patent status of particular medicines, reducing their need to spend limited resources on commercial databases.

How to Use PATENTSCOPE’s Chemical Structure Search

No specialized knowledge is required to use this new tool. Simply log into your PATENTSCOPE account (which can be created free of charge) and follow the user guide for chemical search available in the “Help” menus under “How to search”. To search for chemical compounds embedded in patent documents, you have three options: the “Upload structure” option, the “Convert a structure” option, and the “Structure editor” option.

The search is then run against the title, abstract, claim, and description fields of patent documents in PATENSCOPE, and only works against developed formulas. The search tool is currently available for international patent applications filed under the PCT in English and German from 1978, and for the national collection of the United States from 1979. It will be available for other languages and collections soon.