For corporate IP departments and law firms, the pressure to do more with less is only growing. To meet the challenge, many are taking a closer look at their process workflows, looking for ways to reduce costs and lighten the burden on overworked paralegal and administrative staff. Two areas of patent management—patent filing and patent translations—offer prime opportunities to achieve those dual goals.
Targeting a major cost driver
In today’s global marketplace, filings account for much of the cost associated with obtaining a patent. Optimizing this administrative-intensive task can result in significant savings. This is especially true for patent applications that involve translation, which requires specialized technical expertise in addition to language translation skills.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), companies spend $1 billion annually on patent translation alone. The estimated cost of translating an application into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian ranges from $3,000 to $6,500, which is approximately 75 to 80% of the total filing costs.
This makes a cost-efficient strategy for translations crucial for controlling filing costs. Clarivate™ can help by providing tech-enabled filing services that dramatically reduce the cost of patent filing including translations. In fact, our IP Administrative Services team can reduce the cost of patent filing and translation tasks by up to 40%. These services allow IP teams to offload administrative tasks from paralegal resources and enable them to focus on more productive tasks.
“Through decades of service delivery, we have developed a global network of filing agents and translation experts supporting more than 300 customers worldwide. These experts have assisted in filing approximately 34,000 patent applications in more than 200 jurisdictions, while translating in all major languages,” explains Keshav Sharma, director and product manager in the Patent Services business at Clarivate. “We have been able to negotiate preferred pricing that translates into lower costs for our customers, with special discounts for committed volumes.”
Intelligent use of automation also helps maximize efficiency and speed.
“Major investments from Clarivate in technology, including state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools, improve translation efficiency by up to 35%.”
The value of human expertise
Sharma emphasizes, however, that Clarivate professionals play a central role in ensuring quality and accuracy. “We have a two-level process for quality assurance. Our team of patent translation experts reviews all translations for technical accuracy, followed by additional proofreading for grammar and formatting,” he explains, noting that these Clarivate professionals have between 5 and 15 years of experience and undergo extensive training to ensure consistent accuracy and rapid delivery time.
“Unlike general translation service providers, our core focus is IP translations, so we understand the nuances particular to patent applications. We deploy experienced linguists who have the relevant technical background and sound patent knowledge,” Sharma explains.
The flexibility to scale
Sharma notes that Clarivate also offers the scale to accommodate filing and translation projects of any size. “Our proven processes, large in-house team and vast network of agents and translation partners enable us to handle even large, bulk filing projects without missing deadlines—we have achieved 100% on-time delivery,” he says, noting that the robust agent network at Clarivate enables the ability to handle urgent filings, even if sent a day before the deadline.
Clarivate IP legal expertise, combined with support and near real-time response from our vast agent network, offers other advantages. “For example, in rush situations, our experts can advise whether certain countries included in a filing allow translations to be submitted after the filing without penalty,” Sharma explains.
Making it easy
Sharma says a key priority is making filing and translation easy and convenient for customers—both pre and post-filing. Using the Clarivate online filing portal, customers can place orders, review quotes and track their filings in real time. Our internal process automation — including Power of Attorney (POA) generator, data feed through integration with WIPO, EP Register and Clarivate IP databases, and many others — enable us to deliver filing services faster, more efficiently and with highest accuracy.
Integration with leading IP management systems (IPMS) and document management software (DMS) further streamlines filing and translation processes. “We leverage our team’s expertise across all major IPMS, combined with deep understanding of the complex filing process, to auto-pick all the needed documents from the customer’s IP systems, send instructions to agents and then upload all documents related to the filing back into those systems. This dramatically reduces the customer’s administrative workload using a robust and efficient process,” Sharma says.
Clarivate also takes care of tracking filing deadlines at two levels (one in our customer’s IPMS and then using our filing portal) to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Further, using our invoice management expertise, we validate all agent invoices and fix all discrepancies, thus further reducing our customers’ administrative workload. Customers also have the advantage of a single, consolidated invoice for all filing and translation costs in their currency of choice. This dramatically simplifies the complex task of managing costs across many jurisdictions.
Sharma says it all comes down to helping IP professionals do what they do better. “We serve as an extension of our customers’ teams, adding value by handling the administrative tasks that play an essential role in the patent lifecycle,” he says. “In addition to reducing costs, we decrease filing execution risk while freeing up paralegals’ time to focus on high-value strategic priorities.”
Looking to reduce the cost and administrative burden associated with filing priority, PCT, direct and national phase applications, EP Validations and patent translations? Contact us today to learn how the Clarivate IP Services team can help.
