Monday, November 17, 2008
Blooming business
It seems that the patent business is not affected by the current economic downturn. At lest two of our customers have increased their global patent filing in the past two to three months. I understand that they are preparing for roll out of new product that is cheaper to manufacture; and these improvement include lower the cost to make, transport (reduce weight) and maintain. To make all these patent protection, it also means that their competitors cannot use such new method to produce lower cost product.
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7 comments:
This is good news indeed. I am a patent attorney here in Australia and work at the moment seems to be a little bit quiet compared to the same time last year. Anyway, I hope to see more posts from you in the next while.
Thanks. I am losing one customer though. The inventor has cash flow problem and have to pend all outstanding works. Good that we get paid for all works done and it is still a lost to us.
We see the same thing here in Australia where clients are more and more conscious in the costs of doing just about every little thing.
Incidentally, do you recommend any translation service for translating Chinese patent specification into English specification (and vice versa)? We recently had an enquiry for a cost estimate for doing so, mainly for the purpose of comparing the Chinese claims to the US/AU claims.
m0cha_1atte: Translation is a big problem for me. I have two types of translation work, one is to translate, for example, from Chinese to English, so that our US agent can use that translation as a base for re-drafting the US patent application based on the filed Chinese patent application. That I use the average translator and I do the final touch.
I also help non-Chinese to file patent in China, that I translate the Claims and certain part of the invention description to the inventor for approval. And I have to do it myself, as I have yet to find a good quality translator. And I dont want to do it, because I can only charge normal translation rate and not hourly rate.
In general, we can have translation of a whole patent application in the rate of about USD20 / 100 words (Chinese <-> English both way) I am not doing translation but I will briefly review the translated work and edit it a little bit.
I tried to find more expensive translator in Hong Kong. Problem is not many people has experience in patent work. That creates a problem as they dont know common legal terms used in the patent world.
USD20 / 100 words sounds ok, but like you said, if the translator is not well versed in patent language, the quality of the work may not be ideal.
From what you have said, perhaps I should do the translation myself (I studied until F3 in HK and still read/write Chinese). I wanted to outsource the work initially as my hourly rate (AUD400/hr) would cost our client quite a lot. But if it is hard to find a decent patent translator, it seems safer to just do it myself.
If you desperately need someone with patent experience to translate English <-> Chinese, perhaps I can be of help. I don't mind being a freelance translator. Of course it won't cost as much as my attorney rate.
You are right. My rate for drafting / meeting, etc is much higher than translation work. So it is a headache for me for translation work.
I just came across this Consultancy Programme by the IPD in HK, although it is more like a business analysis than an IP analysis. Nonetheless it may be useful to your clients in HK.
http://www.ipd.gov.hk/eng/icm.htm
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