Dan Whalen is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School
In an interesting turn of events since my post last month, the European Patent Office has recently inked a deal with Google to have the Internet titan do some of its much-debated translation work. Each side will benefit from the arrangement. It takes some pressure off the European Union to reduce the number of sanctioned languages of its planned European patent to English, French, and German. Such a move will surely please Italy and Spain, the two most vocal opponents to the proposed trilingual system. Google, for its end, does not expect to profit immediately but will improve its translation technology in gaining a vast body of documents already translated by professionals.