PLUTO set to break down barriers to patent information access Improving access to multilingual digital patent libraries is the idea behind the new EU-funded project PLUTO ('Patent language translations online'). The project consortium of five partners started work on 1 April 2010. Over the next 3 years, it will receive a total of EUR 2.1... Improving access to multilingual digital patent libraries is the idea behind the new EU-funded project PLUTO ('Patent language translations online'). The project consortium of five partners started work on 1 April 2010. Over the next 3 years, it will receive a total of EUR 2.18 million in funding under the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP) of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to get an innovative system off the ground and running. In order to overcome language barriers that inhibit a more innovative society, the partners are planning to create a rapid and efficient online translation service. The system will be tailored specifically to the needs of inventors looking for information on existing patents and other intellectual property (IP) related matters. Inventors and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to go through a lengthy and costly process when venturing into a new market. A thorough search for existing patents is a must, but this is made more difficult by language barriers, the distribution of information sources over a multitude of sources and - last but not least - the technical and legal expertise required. The 'increase of IP-related activities results in an increased and urgent need for tools to cross language barriers, as language differences are no excuse in cases of infringement,' explain the project partners. 'In this context, the major risk for an SME is that it will invest all its resources to enter a particular market, only to discover later that a competitor has a patent in that market.' The online patent search and translation tool to be developed in the framework of PLUTO will make use of existing web content and the latest machine translation tools. Thanks to its specialisation, it will be more reliable than general-purpose machine translation tools, while maintaining their speed advantage over human translations. Ultimately, it will cover all 23 official EU languages. The academic and industrial project partners from Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden bring just the right assets to the table to achieve this mission: a high-performance machine translation engine; a comprehensive translation software environment; and a methodology for evaluating machine translation output as well as information retrieval and patent expertise. The group will also cooperate closely with the European Patent Office (EPO). Project officer Susan Fraser at the European Commission says that by funding such pilot projects through the ICT-PSP programme, the Commission aims to show the public value of research. 'If PLUTO manages to give small inventors and SMEs the possibility to exploit their inventions more quickly and at lower cost, it fits perfectly into a sustainable European innovation strategy,' she explains. Countries Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden
