Translation costs of patents

Many U.S. companies, having been granted an original U.S. patent, prosecute it in other countries. It would not be unusual to see fifteen to twenty foreign filings for every domestic patent, with many of those filings requiring translation. When patents have ten or more pages explaining such necessities as claims and prior art, and when translation costs upwards of $50 for every page, a ten page U.S. patent in eight languages would cost for translation alone approximately $4,000.

File foreign patents only where the business case justifies the cost, look for excessive text that drives translation costs up, and explore consolidating your foreign language services with fewer translation companies.