INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, COPYRIGHT AND TRANSLATION TOOLS

 

 

The purpose of this site is to provide a centralised resource for anyone seeking information about the increasing relevance of intellectual property and copyright legislation  to automated translation tools, particularly translation memory files and terminological data bases. This is a fairly new area and at present not a great deal of information is available. The most interesting sources are set out below, and I intend to add new references and links as further studies and research come to light.

 

Seminar on Copyright, Intellectual Property and Translation Tools: Barcelona, October 2007

 

The relationship between IP, copyright and automated translator resources was addressed for the first time at an international event at the “Seminar on Copyright, Intellectual Property and Translation Tools” held in Barcelona in October 2007. The seminar was organised by FIT Europe and Asetrad, and was sponsored by the Pompeu Fabra University and CEDRO (Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos).

 

The conference papers are available here.

 

As was highlighted by various speakers, the essential legislation governing this area is to be found in the WIPO international treaties and EU legislation governing databases.

 

Other sources of information on TM and termbank ownership

 

  • The question of who owns translation memories has taken on considerable relevance due to the emergence of the first web marketplace for licensing TMs, TMMarketplace, whose web site includes a detailed white paper explaining their approach to the legal issues surrounding copyright and aligned web documents.

 

  • Jeff Allen, a specialist in machine translation and localisation, has been tracking the opinions of translation tool users about copyright matters for some years at this page.

 

  • Another web-based initiative to ascertain translators' opinions was carried out via a survey edited by Antonio Valderrábanos, which is available at the Transref web site (run by Atril) under the title Who owns what? Some Insights on TM Ownership .

 

  • SDL-Trados, who make the popular Workbench and TagEditor tools, have included a web seminar called Copyright Protection of Translation Memories at their SDL-Trados events archive. The presentation, by Tracey Byrne, can be consulted here.

 

  • One of the first specialists to consider  translation memory ownership from a legal viewpoint was the Spanish Lawyer Jorge Marcos, whose analysis can be found here (in Catalan; anyone wanting a Spanish translation can contact me at the email address below. The main points of his study are covered in my paper at the FIT-Europe site).

 

If you know of any interesting source which is not given above or if you have any questions on this area, please contact me at

ross.smith@es.pwc.com