Innovation requires research, investment and time. But innovation also gains value from the ability to protect it, document it and bring it to international markets.
This was one of the topics discussed during Legalcommunity Week in Milan, in a panel dedicated to the role of the pharmaceutical industry in innovation and the state of scientific research in Italy. The discussion brought together representatives from industry, research and the legal sector. The pharmaceutical industry provides a particularly valuable perspective. However, many of the issues discussed also concern medical devices, chemicals, mechanical engineering, automation and other technology-intensive sectors.
Across all these fields, research, intellectual property, technical documentation and regulatory requirements are closely interconnected.
Innovation must be protected from the outset
Research requires resources and can involve very long timeframes. In the pharmaceutical industry, for example, development progresses from laboratory research through the different phases of clinical trials before a new medicinal product can be authorised.
Throughout this process, intellectual property enables companies to protect the results of their innovative activities and the investments they have made. This principle is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry. A new industrial technology, medical device, innovative material or manufacturing process may require years of research before reaching the market.
For this reason, a protection strategy cannot be considered only at the end of the process. It needs to accompany innovation throughout its development.
When should you file a patent? Balancing timing and robustness
One of the most interesting topics to emerge at Legalcommunity Week concerned when to file a patent application.
Filing very early can help companies get ahead of potential competitors. However, it may also mean that only limited evidence is available to support the invention. Waiting allows data and results to be consolidated, but introduces other risks. Scientific publications, presentations or other forms of disclosure may interfere with the protection strategy.
There is therefore no automatic answer. Intellectual property management needs to progress alongside research. Collaboration between R&D, IP and legal teams can begin as early as the prior art assessment and continue throughout evidence gathering, filing and subsequent stages of development.
This relationship is particularly evident in the pharmaceutical industry. Developments in preclinical and clinical research can generate new evidence and open up further opportunities for protection.
Patent or trade secret? Two ways to protect innovation
Not all innovation is protected through patents. Manufacturing processes, methodologies, know-how, technological information and commercial data may also fall under trade secret protection.
EU legislation itself recognises patents and trade secrets as different tools through which companies can protect the results of their innovative activities. EU Directive 2016/943 also highlights the value of trade secrets for competitiveness, research and development.
This introduces another dimension to the issue: the circulation of information. Confidential documents are shared with researchers, law firms, consultants, industrial partners and suppliers. In international projects, they may also be translated into multiple languages. Protecting innovation therefore also means controlling how information is managed throughout the entire document workflow.
Patent translation: when a single word can change the scope of an invention
When a patent crosses linguistic borders, translation becomes an integral part of the innovation protection process.
Patent translation sits at the intersection of technical and scientific language and legal language. Descriptions, claims, abstracts and technical terminology each perform specific functions and therefore require highly specialised linguistic expertise.
In the European patent system, moreover, multilingualism is structural. The official languages of the European Patent Office (EPO) are English, French and German. A European patent application may also be filed in another language, but it must subsequently be translated into one of the EPO’s three official languages within the applicable time limits. This then becomes the language of the proceedings. When the European patent specification is published, the claims are also available in all three official languages.
Translating a patent, therefore, does not simply mean making a text understandable in another language. It means transferring highly specialised content while preserving technical accuracy, terminological consistency and correspondence between the different language versions.
In a document that defines and describes an invention, even a single terminological choice can have significant consequences. This is why translation quality is not merely a linguistic issue: it becomes an integral part of managing the risks associated with the international protection of innovation.
Terminology becomes part of risk management
A term that appears to be equivalent may carry different nuances within a specific technical field. An imprecise formulation can introduce ambiguity where none existed in the original text. For this reason, terminology should not be managed in isolation for each individual document.
The same innovation may appear in patents, scientific studies, clinical documentation, regulatory dossiers, contracts, SOPs, technical manuals or IFUs. These may be accompanied by documents intended for authorities, commercial partners and different markets. Consistency across all this content therefore becomes a strategic consideration.
For an international company, managing terminology means creating continuity between research, intellectual property, compliance and technical communication. It also means reducing the risk of discrepancies when the same concept moves from one document to another and from one language to another.
AI and patents: speed and control need to coexist
Artificial intelligence and machine translation are also changing workflows and turnaround times in the patent field. The European Patent Office itself provides Patent Translate, developed with Google and based on Neural Machine Translation, to facilitate the understanding of patent documents in numerous languages.
However, quickly understanding a patent and producing a translation intended for professional use are not necessarily the same thing. For high-risk content, the question is not simply whether or not to use AI, but how to govern it. This means establishing where it should be used, with which data, for what purpose and with what level of specialist oversight.
Integrating AI into linguistic processes can increase speed and scalability. In regulated sectors, however, it needs to be part of a process that ensures data security, specialist expertise, terminology control and review.
From research to market, language accompanies innovation
Innovation can begin in a pharmaceutical laboratory, a research centre or the R&D department of an industrial company. From that moment, it embarks on a journey involving experimentation, documentation, protection and market access.
When that journey becomes international, language inevitably comes into play.
This is why specialist translation should not be regarded simply as the final step before filing an application or publishing a document.
In patent translation and, more broadly, in regulated sectors, managing language correctly means contributing to the consistency and reliability of the information that accompanies innovation.
Protecting innovation also means ensuring that, when information moves from one language to another, its accuracy remains intact.
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