Copyright as it affects patent copies and translations

TRANSLATIONS INVOLVE TWO COPYRIGHT HOLDERS

Persons who attended the SLA session on copyrights on Monday learned
that translation involves two copyright holders. The permission of the
original document's copyright owner is required before a document is
translated. The translator owns the copyright for the translated document.

PRUDENT ATTENTION TO COPYRIGHT IN PATENT TRANSLATION

It is legally and ethically prudent for consumers of patent copies and
translations to inquiry whether or not their patent copy and translation
supplier maintains the required licenses, and are authorized to convey
the rights the consumer needs.

INDEMNIFICATION IS LESS ASSURED FOR IMPORT/EXPORT

This is even more prudent in an international Internet environment since
infringement indemnification provisions do not necessarily cross
national boundaries (see
http://www.cisg.law.pace.edu/cisg/text/e-text-42.html).

PATERRA'S PRACTICE

Paterra has maintained paid-up licenses from the Japan Patent Office
since 1993. These licenses cover bulk patent data published on CD-ROM
and DVD for A class documents since 1993 and B class documents since
1996. These licenses allow full data processing, indexing, copying and
translation, i.e., any use short of making knock-off copies of the
original CD-ROMs and DVDs.

Paterra's Internet Service Agreement explicitly grants its clients
rights to use copies and translations purchased from Paterra.

WHAT ABOUT THE PTO WEB SITES?

Copyrighting for patent documents, and terms and conditions for use of
the various PTO web sites may differ significantly from office to
office. The following are some links for those who are interested in
reading further:

Japan Patent Office IPDL web site terms and conditions:
http://www.ipdl.ncipi.go.jp/notice_e.htm

WIPO: http://www.wipo.int/tools/en/disclaim.html




--
The BEST dictionaries produce the BEST translations. <http://www.paterra.com/BestDictionaries.pdf>

InstantMT(r) machine translation of Japanese Patents. http://www.paterra.com

Free resources for classification-based patent searching:
English: http://cxp.paterra.com
Japanese: http://cxp.paterra.com/jp
Chinese/English search page: http://cxp.paterra.com/cn

Paterra, Inc.
http://www.paterra.com
800-430-5727
610-527-4500

Received on Tue Jun 07 2005 - 20:40:26