In a move to further improve multilingual access to information contained in patent documents, the European Patent Office (EPO) made another set of European languages available in its free machine translation service Patent Translate. With the addition of Bulgarian, Czech, Icelandic, Romanian, Slovak and Slovenian, the service now offers on-the-fly-translation from and into English for 21 languages. It is accessible on the EPO's free online patent database, Espacenet.

By the end of 2014 Patent Translate is expected to cover all 28 languages of the EPO's 38 member states, plus Russian and the major Asian languages. The service will then constitute the world's most comprehensive multilingual platform for patent information.

To get started with the Patent Translate service, please click here.

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Many people confuse the concepts of the ownership of intellectual property (IP) and the inventorship or authorship of creations, or sometimes they are simply not aware of their different nature. Yet, it is crucial to understand how to manage these rights as their improper handling could cause real problems, such as the validity of IP rights (IPR) granted or the risks of legal disputes.

This fact sheet aims to clarify the ownership, inventorship and authorship concepts by explaining the different characteristics and shedding some light on the way they should be dealt with in order for any person involved in the creation of intangibles to properly identify them and avoid encountering serious problems.

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The Single Market is full of opportunities, in particular to do business in another EU country than your own. It is essential that in this process you are aware of your rights. The website Your Europe can certainly help you get the important information that you need on the Internal Market, as Commissioner Barnier explains here.

On this website, you will also find a webpage dedicated to Intellectual Property Rights, with information concerning the European Union and also each Member State. On Your Europe you will find the main Intellectual Property rules in each country, as well as information on further resources and organizations dealing with Intellectual Property at national level.

On Your Europe you will also find a useful catalogue of available online tools and services for business concerning Intellectual Property Rights.

The information is available in all the languages of the European Union.

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Are you looking for basic information on IP, or are you particularly interested in IP issues related to FP7 projects? Three educational clips recently published on our website provide you with useful information based on the European IPR Helpdesk training catalogue.

In case you are new to the world of patent, copyright, etc. the first educational clip might be the right choice. In just 20 minutes it provides you with basic concepts and definitions of IP and IPR.

If you are looking for more detailed information on IP issues related to EU-funded Collaborative Projects feel free to watch the clips titled “IP in FP7 – Part 1 & 2”. Key aspects and general rules with regard to IP during the entire life cycle of an FP7 project as well as the different agreements are explained to you in a concise way.

You will find our clips here.

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The World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) has published the 2012 IP Facts and Figures. This publication includes data on patents, utility models, trademarks and industrial designs and it is focused on application data only. The guide is therefore an important source of information on the global trends of intellectual property activity.

This guide is available online and you may read it in full here.

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The Academy of the European Patent Office (EPO) has released a handbook setting up new teaching content to make it easier for university lecturers to introduce intellectual property into various courses of study and educational programmes.

The manual will be of particular interest to those studying business/economics, innovation management and law. The manual consists of twenty-two modules grouped into five core areas, and can be downloaded in electronic format or ordered as a hard copy for free.

For further information please click here, for downloading or ordering here.

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We are pleased to inform you that the European IPR Helpdesk has produced a fact sheet explaining how to carry out a patent search using one of the most used patent databases, Espacenet, which includes quick and advanced search options.

Conducting patent searches is very useful for several purposes, not only for organizations such as SMEs and universities, but also for researchers. However, in order to perform good and useful searches, it is essential to understand the structure of patent information, whatever form it can take (full text or bibliographic) as well as where and how to use the search tools available - elements that we will also present in this fact sheet.

The aim of this fact sheet is thus to introduce this complex tool to you, in a user-friendly fashion.