Russian Patents Blog

Back in August 2009 we introduced an optional service – free trademark search in Russia. My opinion on what free search is good for is known and well worded directly at the page we offer the service at.

Since August we received only one inquiry for free search in Russian trademarks (as compared to tens of inquiries for regular Russian trademark search) – and results of the free search only cemented my opinion that free trademark search in Russia being total and complete waste of time and totally misleading.

Here is the story – rather short, and structured in the table for your convinience.

	Client:	Patents from RU:
1	My employer has asked me to determine whether we will be able to trademark our company & product name, OurCompanyProduct, in the Russian Federation. On your web page at http://patentsfromru.com/free-russia-trademark-search.html, you offer to search the Russian trademark database for exact matches for free. Please do a search for this word – "OurCompanyProduct".	No problem. We received the inquiry on 9 pm and delivered the trademark search report on 10 pm, which included results obtained by exact match and fuzzy search on the word. We carried out the search only in registered trademarks. Results: No exact matches were found.
2	The boss just authorized a $150 charge for the "real" search to determine if we have a clear shot at "OurCompanyProduct" in the Russian Federation.	OK. So we did regular trademark search which included also Russian trademark applications. Results: Exact match found (more to this – exactly in the class the client was most interested in) in a Russian trademark application filed 9 months ago.

So, effectively, a $150 search saved out client US$735 in filing fees – cause if they’d file just based on the results of the free search, Russian Patent and Trademark Office would turn the application down due to the fact that confusingly similar application was already filed.

But that’s not all – now, the most intriguing part of the story…I wondered what company happened to file an application for exactly the same word in exactly the same class? I googled the company’s name (say, THECOMPANY LLC) up and found out that domain in the email address my client sent the inquiry from had been registered in the name of…THECOMPANY LLC.

Anyways, as my client mentioned in his followup email, all’s well that ends well.

–
Source: Russian patents blog

Sphere: Related Content

Filed under: registration of trade marks in Russia | No Comments »

Some time ago I came across an excellent blog post named The Best Part of This Job – Russ Krajec shared his thoughts on some advantages of being a patent attorney: “patent law is fun because the patent agent/attorney generally deals with happy, optimistic, and creative people. I often tell people that patent law is unique in that I only deal with happy people” – read the rest of the entry, it’s very inspiring. It made me wrote a draft of my post on this very subject – unfortunately, it’s still the draft

Here is just a snippet out of this coming revelation

One on the things I enjoy most about my occupation of information professional is communication with people from all corners of the world. I love the feeling of being exposed to new locations – even virtually (I do not travel much

Whenever I happen to get in touch with somebody on a business matter, I always – just out of curiousity – google their whereabouts, and this way become aware of plenty interesting places I never heard about or never seen something about (I rarely watch telly).

Just recently these were Zhuhai in Southern China on Chinese sea searshore and Lower Hutt near Wellington in New Zealand on a seashore, too … I immediately wanted to take a couple of weeks off

From now on I’m going to post pictures of these places on the Photoblog section of the blog. Commentatorss are always welcome !

Kia ora!

PS: speaking about places I never heard about – I bet most of you never heard about the city of Izhevsk where I reside. So here is a couple of pictures for you – enjoy!

Sphere: Related Content

Filed under: facts of life | 2 Comments »

In this post I’d like to share couple of thoughs on how it’d be possible to considerably lower down cost of translation of Russian patents into English (or whatever else language pair).

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]

Sphere: Related Content

Filed under: facts of life, russian patent translation, russian patents | 2 Comments »