Obtaining a machine translation of an old Japanese patent literature with six steps

The Examining Division of the EPO often cites Japanese patent literatures as prior art documents.

Those of you who are not familiar with the Japanese language will probably then look for English machine translations of these Japanese patent literatures created either by the EPO or Google Patent in order to get a grasp of the contents of these documents.

However, the cited Japanese patent literatures are sometimes so old that neither the EPO nor the Google Patent provides English machine translations of these documents. 

In this case, it may still be possible to obtain an English machine translation from so called J-PlatPat, a platform of the Japanese Patent Office, with following steps 1 to 6:

Step 1

Open the English page of “Patent/Utility Model Number Search” in J-PlatPat.

 

 

Step 2

Input the publication number of the Japanese patent literature you look for in the second field.

 

In this regard, you may have encountered a situation in which J-PlatPat did not accept the publication number although you have correctly enter the number as indicated on the Japanese patent literature. This happens because J-PlatPat requires a certain format (SXX-XXXXX or HXX-XXXXXX) of a publication number but a publication number is not necessarily indicated according to the format on a Japanese patent literature.

In this case you must slightly modify the publication number depending on the number at the begin of the publication number.

If the number at the begin is 4 or larger, e.g. 59-12345, then the number has to be modified to S59-012345.

On the other hand, if the number at the begin is 0 or 1, e.g. 1-12345, then the number has to be modified to H01-012345.

 

Step 3

Click the search button.

 

Step 4

Click the publication number at the search result.

 

Step 5

Click “Open” at “Scope of Claims” and “Detailed Description”.

 

Step 6

Done. Congratulations! You have now a English machine translation of the Japanese patent literature.