I saw quite nice example of such a classified patent today while visiting with my 7 yrs old kid Mikhail Kalashnikov’s museum in the city of Izhevsk, Russia. Kalashnikov got a classified patent for submachine gun – actually, that was just a prototype of AK-47, or even prototype of some vital parts later used in the design.

See also:

This week we received following inquiry from Spanish company:

We are looking for two RU Patents. In case these two documents are available IN ENGLISH, please, let us know the price & conditions of delivery.

As usually, I responded in this manner:

Full texts of Russian patents are never available in English. Available (and not with 100% certainty) are only English abstracts of 1994 – current RU patents.

We can translate these patents for you. We charge $0.12/word
(English), estimated cost of translation is $405 for RU2141655 and $249 for RU2326320.

You’ll pay after receiving the translation.

Client replied:

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that is too much money for us to spend in these documents, asked by a technitian of us.

I believe that my following answer might be of help to somebody, so I’m quoting it here in full.

I thought about your inquiry today, and it appeared to me that there might be a solution for such a case like yours. I take it that your technician just wants to familiarize with the content of the documents. While regular translation cost appears not feasible in this case, he might find use of machine translation – i.g. by Google Translate.

I’ve been using it all the time to get a fast translation of documents in languages I do not understand, and I can tell you what quality of translation got considerably improved over time – I even use it to make a draft translation of short texts from Russian to English (further on I just edit the draft – it indeed saves me a lot of time, it’s faster than to make a text in English from scratch).

As an extra option, you may want to proof edit this machine translated text either by hiring a freelance translator (i.g. via ProZ – consider $0.03/word rate) or via One Hour Translation (they charge $0.15 for Expert translation of legal, medical, technical etc. texts – that’s there patents generally fall – but proof-editing service costs $0.05/word).

Main advantage of One Hour Translation over ProZ is speed of translation – the name of the service shows it, they make it a point to provide translation in a matter of hours.

Another advantage of OHT type service over ProZ service is what freelancers found at ProZ might complain that proofediting of machine translated text actually means translating the given text anew (I know it for sure – I’ve been into translation services for ages) – on the contrary, regular freelancers from One Hour Translation won’t complain.

Of course, the drawback is lesser quality at OHT – but in this case I believe it’d be sufficient, your technician will be able to understand the text, and being a professional in this field he will understand what exactly translator (editor) got wrong or missed – and your technician will guess upon vague moments.

At least such a cost effective solution might pass as a temporary solution – if he sees what the document is worth further – professional – translation, you could always proceed with more thorough translation.

That said, I can provide text copies of those Russian patents which will be suitable for feeding them into Google Translate.

—
[Source: Russian Patents blog]

Related posts:

• Comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature
• Russian patents in English language
• Latest news on Russian patent search, translation and document detective joys
• Feb 15th: portfolio of Russian patent translations updated
• Translating Chemistry: Poor translation is costly

“If I may ask you, what is you service about? Do you have
access to scientific information other than patents? for the past 10
years we are involved in catechin and other biflavonoids research and
discovered that many studies have been conducted in Russia / USSR.”

Actually, I was under impression what scope of our services is rather simple yet in detail explained at Patents from RU site – but apparently there is much to improve.

I took some time to summarize a description of our services in regard of scientific information researches we’ve been involved in lately – comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature has been our main occupation.

First off, here is a summary of search related services we carry out:

1) Russian patent documents delivery (for documents dated back to 1924).

We charge $29.50 per documents which are available in databases, and $50 for documents (like applications) which need to be ordered from archives.

Databases include Russian patents, Russian utility models and Russian industrial designs.

2) Russian patent database research

This service relates to cases when only a partial information is available.
We charge per hour, $60/hour.
Results will include document numbers and abstracts (if possible, in English).

3) Prior art search in patent databases of Russia and former USSR republics.

We charge $295 per subclass of IPC (there might be 1 to 5 subclasses) for searching Russian patents going back to 1924, and flat fee of $295 per search for searching fSU databases (back to 1993).

Normally, patent search is completed within a week.

Regarding English-language summary of the relevancy of found documents – the cost quoted does not include translation. English language abstracts are normally (but not 100%) available for post 1991 Russian patents – but older documents never had an English language abstracts.

We’ll do our best though to provide a short summary of each found
reference.

4) Russian Non-patent literature search (including bibliography research, Russian Internet queries, manual search in libraries).

We charge $60/hour, minimum 15 hours.
We’ll be providing intermediary reports as which literature was searched and what was found, so client will maintain control over expenses and time frame.

It’s hardly possible to provide time frame estimate – a 1-1.5 months would be more/less safe bet.

5) Document delivery service for references cited in bibliography research.

We charge $50 per references (up to 50 pages).
As a rule, we’ve been able to obtain Russian journal articles within a week.
Success rate is about 95%.

We’re able to obtain non-Russian references as well (especially from Eastern Europe countries), but success rate is considerably lower – although we do have a patron who keeps turning to us as his last resort once he’s unable to track non-Russian articles and oftentimes we’ve been able to deliver.

6) Russian to English translation service

We charge $0.12/word (English). All translations are being proof-edited by our partner in USA whose mother tongue is American English. His specializations are: pharmaceuticals, chemistry, biotechnology, agrochemicals, medical, and polymers.

His background includes:
- Two Years chemical research at CB Research & Development and Beard Research Inc., Senior Research Chemist
- Eleven years chemical research at DuPont, Senior Research Chemist
- Six years academic teaching and research at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn
· Collaborations with researchers in Germany, Soviet Union and Japan

Further on, here is an example of latest comprehensive search in biochem field. This is just an outline of the job done, but upon inquiry I can provide copies of actual search reports.

Results of the search were submitted to client in following order:

search-report-patents.doc
report-internet.pdf
report-articles.pdf
report-articles-2.pdf
report-articles-2a.pdf
report-foreign journals.pdf

Project scope:

1) Prior art search in Russian patent literature, at $295 per IPC subclass, total two subclasses searched (A61K 31/ and C07C 233/); results delivered as PDF files.
2) Prior art search in other Russian language databases – namely
former USSR countries patent databases and EAPATIS (Eurasian patents), at $295 per search
3) Prior art search in Russian non-patent literature, at $60/hour, total 18 hours spent

Charge for the project was: US$1965.00

There were neither translation nor document delivery services involved in this case.

–
Source: Russian patents blog

Related posts:

• Latest news on Russian patent search, translation and document detective joys
• Russian patents in English – cheaper than usual?
• Feb 15th: portfolio of Russian patent translations updated
• First-To-File vs First-to-Invent explained, quite nicely
• Translating Chemistry: Poor translation is costly

I contributed to answers (along with 5 other colleagues), and we agreed what getting Russian patents in English is a tough matter.

It seems that this very question arises over and over again – I keep seeing search queries like “translate document russian to english” in our website logs.

In fact, we’ve been monitoring recently published Russian patents on regular basis – every new one gets downloaded and studied, and while we collect these anyways, I’ve decided to make English abstracts for these Russian patents available online – perhaps it’d be of help to Internet community.

They are being published “as-is” on a separate subdomain of Patents from RU site, check it out here – http://technews.patentsfromru.com/

NB: These English abstracts of Russian patents were translated into English by RUPTO staff. – not by us.

Related posts:

• Russian patents in English – cheaper than usual?
• The top patent blogs list
• Comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature
• Testimonials page updated
• Latest news on Russian patent search, translation and document detective joys

Last week we simultaneously (the same day) received similar inquires from two separate people – one came from the US and another from Spain. These inquires brought my attention to the fact that we forgot to mention this kind of service at our site (Update: fixed), but meanwhile I decided to put up a short post on this matter.

So, the inquiries were like these:

I wish to enter my PCT patent with your firm on Russia. I have 2 PCT patents. You can give
information (prices at reasonable cost and others) about your office ,so I can enter my PCT
into Russia with your Firm.

and 2nd one:

I need to do a PCT national stage filing in your country by July 27, 2008 (the 31 month priority date), for application PCT/US2006/062***. If this is something you can do for me, please quote me the cost of having you do the PCT national stage filing for me in Russia, including translation of the
application (about 9334 words in English).

I believe my response might be of interest to other inventors from around the world.

The costs for entering the national phase of a PCT-application before
the Russian Patent Office will be the following:

1) basic fee for taking over representation and entering the national
phase:

official fees USD 200
attorney fees USD 850

2) filing the examination request

official fees USD 300
attorney fees USD 100

Attorney fees include all necessary actions during Patent Office
prosecution until getting the Resolution of Patent Office (~12-13
months).

Additional fees may become due, if the application includes the group
of inventions or more than 25 claims. In this case, however, we will contact you readily to check, whether the number of claims can be reduced, for example by deleting subclaims. The above
costs do not reflect any disbursements.

The Application will be filed during a week.

The number of Application and the date of filing will be known after ~45 days
– we will send to you the e-copy of Notice of Arrival.

As for translation – cost of translation is $15/100 words (most of Russian patent attorneys
would charge $20/100 words – but do not bother to provide a portfolio of RUS<>ENG patent translations, which we do maintain), so for 9334 words in English it’d be $1395 (you’d save $465 with us).

The following documents are necessary to do a PCT national stage filing in Russia:
- Applicant name
- Inventors names
- Claims
- Description
- Figures
- Copy of the priority Application (first US Application)
- Power of Attorney (signed by the Applicant)

As for turnaround:

- Translation of the PCT application (from English to Russian, about 9334 words in English): 1 week
- Express mail delivery of signed Power of Attorney from you to us: 4-5 days
- Transfer of funds from you to us (bank wire): 4 days
- Transfer of funds from us to RUPTO (bank wire): another 4 days
- Postal delivery of the application to RUPTO: 4 days (as an option, express mail will take 1 day).

See also:

Our customer was interested in getting one Russian patent and two articles from Russian scientific journals, and he wanted these possibly translated into English. He came to the right place! Not only we found the articles for him (as mentioned in previous post, it was delivered super fast), but we also translated all three documents within a week (take a look at our updated portfolio of Russian to English translations).

Another customer sought to obtain an old Soviet patent ( USSR Inventor’s Certificate), and we encountered an interesting problem – full text of the document was not available through RUPTO paid database, the entry was blanc. We turned to our CD-ROM collection, but again this document was not available in full – entry contained only Abstract. So we had to request the document from archives. Luckily, it took RUPTO arhievists merely a week to locate a paper copy.

And another interesting task we embarked on last week was delivery of an article written in Russian language but published not in Russia – it was an Ukrainian reference. To much of our satisfaction, we managed to track it down – it took us slightly more time than usual, 5 business
days instead of our regular 2-3 days. We added it to our portfolio of Russian scientific journals search.

This request came from our US patron who began to order through Patents from RU articles not only in Russian, but in other languages as well – this Ukrainian reference (supposedly it must have been published in Ukrainian, at least title suggested so) became 2nd inquiry, first was request to find 2 Polish referencies. I enjoyed the hunt a lot! I had to browse many Polish resources, and 1st of Polish documents was found in its native country, but in the end I spotted the 2nd article via – surprise – US source, located not far from where are patron resides

I just love document detective job. You got some, feel free to contact me.

Related posts:

• Comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature
• Feb 15th: portfolio of Russian patent translations updated
• Translating Chemistry: Poor translation is costly
• Russian patents in English – cheaper than usual?
• Two articles from Russian scientific journals were resqued from debris of paper archives and given new digital life

All in all, it’s another nice attempt to make a specialized patent meta-search engine recently I’ve also seen Patent Bar toolbar and some kind of Squidoo lens to name just a few. While Prior Smart have its merits (e.g. I was able to easily locate IT patent of an italian inventor I’ve been in touch on regard of licensing patent in Russia lately), it certainly does have it’s limitations, which have been known for ages – that be lame national PTO sites.

I tried a search on Russian patents (in fact, I wanted to locate a Russian patent granted to inventor from Italy) and spotted two issues:

1) Prior Smart submits query to RU.Espacenet server and NOT directly to RUPTO site (even despite RUPTO site been lame, it’d make sense to refer to original source, not to a mirror). More to this – RU.Espacenet server data is limited to past 1994 Russian patents only, all pre-1994 Russian (that is Soviet/USSR) patents remained out of reach.

2) Russian PTO has a funny habit of double transliteration (from Latin to Cyrillic and from Cyrillic back to Latin character set) of foreign inventors’ names which might ruin original name completely. That’s what happened in my search attempt exactly. I do not want to reveal real name I was searching on, but for example it might look like this:

Foreign applicant’s name: Inventor OH JANG-KEUN (KR)

after double transliteration -

Inventor information: OKh Dzang-keun (KR)

So, do you think I’d succeed in locating OH JANG-KEUN in Russian patents?
Hint: no, I would fail, cause OH JANG-KEUN is unknow to RUPTO, it knows only OKh Dzang-keun .

Owner of 262ventures.com blog said yesterday:

In an ideal world, making it easier to know what prior art exists across the world, should prevent, proverbially, ¦the reinvention of the wheel.· For example, there are probably tons of interesting invention buried in the Swedish patent office. But because I can·t read Swedish, I won·t even bother to look.

Same for Russian. Sadly, PriorSmart didnt succeed in making it easier by now.

PS today I updated our portfolio of most recent Russian scientific and medical articles search – this time we achieved mindblowing 2 hours turnaround, that truly deserves to be put into Guinness book of records – I wonder if they mind starting a book of patent world records

Related posts:

• Russian patents in English – cheaper than usual?
• The top patent blogs list
• Comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature
• Russian patents in English language
• Testimonials page updated

Lately, it’s been Aero-Space field.

Top manager of an air carrier company (and author of books on history of aviation) turned for our assistance in attempt to locate Russian patents dated back to 1908-1912.

Then a Chinese customer inquired on 1950-s stuff re certain wing designs.

And yesterday NASA contacted us seeking help in obtaining materials on lunar wheel design.

Hmm, it seems that bears, vodka and snow are not the only things which are of interest – although bear and vodka might be gaining popularity again due to Dmitry Medvedev (bear = Medved) been elected Russian President and certain vodka trademark applications are in the queue – here are Medvedeff (targeted at foreign markets) and Medvedevka (that’s for inner market I suppose):


(see also previous post Politics + Trademarks Russian way: “Vladimir Putin” vs “Dmitry Medvedev”

Related posts:

• Testimonials page updated
• Translating Chemistry: Poor translation is costly
• Case study: free trademark search in Russia
• Russian patents in English – cheaper than usual?
• Some of trademark applications we’ve filed in Russia recently

In the keyboard the following innovations are realized:
1. Rotated blocks of alphabetic keys are arranged under individual preferences of the concrete person.
2. In all columns of a key are located physiologically: without skews.
3. All language allocations of alphabetic keys are adhered to a uniform sound allocation. The main letters of all alphabets which display the same elementary sound of speech, are placed on a key of nominal this sound of speech. That is very convenient at switching from one language allocation on another.
4. The sound allocation of alphabetic keys is constructed by the Rule of an articulation of elementary sounds of speech; actually, under the scientific Law which was formulated by the author of this new keyboard Alexander Makeev.
On zones of an articulation: from below upwards from most internally articulated up to most externally articulated.
On a degree of rapproachement of bodies of speech in a zone of an articulation from left to right: indistinct explosive sounds of speech, indistinct sibiliant sounds of speech, vowel sounds of speech (on the left rotated block of keys); sonorous sonorous sibiliant sounds of speech, sonorous explosive sounds of speech (on the right rotated block of keys).
Superfluous (duplicating) letters of corresponding language alphabets are born in additional columns of keys.
5. Many superfluous keys are removed from the keyboard.
6. Keys for input of numbers and mathematical symbols are located conveniently and logically.
7. New keys and new elements of the keyboard are added.
8. Corresponding functional groups of keys are painted in various colors for convenience of orientation on the keyboard.

All these innovations allow to type the text and figures by ten fingers even without preliminary training, not looking almost on the keyboard.

Look the Patent of Russia for Useful Model « the Keyboard with rotated blocks of keys » RU 63948 U1, given on June, 10, 2007, a priority from December, 26, 2006.

See also:

A2: If this USSR author’s cerificate is available through Russian patent office database, it will cost you $29.50

However, it might be classified – in this case it will depend on accessability of certain library funds.

See also: