James Lacey, Senior Vice President, Product & Operations of IP Services of RWS
At the end of the 1990s, the Chinese government actively promoted and advanced the "Going Global" strategy, paving the road for Chinese enterprises' overseas expansion. Taking this opportunity, the RWS Group, a multinational company providing language, content, and IP services, entered the Chinese market in 2006 with its extensive global experience and accurate grasp of China's development needs, marking a significant step in the expansion of its own global business footprint. Today, China's journey toward global IP protection has made unprecedented progress, with Chinese innovators increasingly prominent and influential in the global technology innovation arena. RWS has become one of the witnesses and supporters of this great achievement.
Founded in the UK in 1958, the RWS Group now has over 7,500 employees in 85 offices worldwide. As a core business, the IP sector comprises over 600 people globally, spanning from the West Coast of the United States to Europe, Australia, and China. This diverse team has been continuously creating values for the world's top IP and legal service institutions as well as leading brands in various industries. In 2023, RWS China's IP Solutions team was recognized as one of the "2023 Outstanding IP Service Teams in China" by China IP Magazine. We were honored to have an interview with James Lacey, Senior Vice President, Product & Operations of IP Services of RWS, who shared his insights on RWS's full life-cycle IP solutions.
With his classic checkered shirt, crisp suit, and pen and paper in hand, the British gentleman looks meticulous with humility and focus evident in his eyes. James revealed that he joined RWS in June 2023, and that he had been engaged in intellectual property since 2004, holding various global positions and dedicating himself to helping clients unlock and realize the value of their global IP portfolios.
Leveraging AI and human expertise to optimize overseas IP protection
Today, RWS's IP language services are available in more than 150 languages across all technical fields, with an annual delivery of 900 million words, including translations of claims and specifications that comply with the requirements for European patent validation, PCT patent applications at the national phase, patent applications via the Paris Convention route, and various technical documents for reference and litigation purposes (such as office actions, preliminary amendments, examiners' reports, litigation documents, opposition proceedings, and communication documents, etc.).
Key drivers behind the high-quality delivery of this massive volume are the talent pool attracted to the RWS platform and RWS's continuous innovation in translation assistance technologies. RWS boasts a vast network of global linguists, with over 2,000 full-time translators and more than 30,000 freelancers from 169 countries or regions. In addition, RWS is an early adopter of project management thinking in translation processes, and has successfully obtained a number of international certifications, including ISO 9001, ISO 17100, ISO 27001 and ISO 14001. The scientific workflow ensures the efficient and stable delivery of RWS solutions, thus significantly reducing the management burden on clients, allowing them to focus more on their core business.
"RWS is one of the pioneers in integrating technology into the translation processes. RWS's practice of exploring and utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to improve translation quality and efficiency can be traced back over 20 years," James said. From the early development of electronic dictionaries and translation memory and management systems, to the introduction of statistical machine translation in 2003, and now the neural machine translation (NMT) platform, RWS has consistently led the industry in revolutionizing the quality and efficiency of translations. James stated, "Our well-known CAT (Computer Aided Translation) tool, Trados Studio, has redefined the way language specialists translate content, greatly enhancing translation efficiency and accuracy."
As the voice that "AI will lead the fourth industrial revolution" becoming prevalent, what role will professional IP translators play in the future? "We firmly believe that translators will not be replaced by AI--it will only augment their roles." James answered without hesitation. "We see a future where human and AI will come together. A fusion of the two will be more powerful than either is alone. As a technology-driven provider of language, content, and IP services, RWS has a strong roadmap of technologies and AI solutions in development. Entering the AI era, RWS has come up with the concept of ‘Genuine Intelligence'. This philosophy allows us to leverage AI and our human expertise to create a path toward content confidence at the global scale and speed that our clients demand."
"Take RWS's practice of human-machine collaboration as an example. In their work, translators use Trados to build translation memory databases. When encountering similar texts later, the system will suggest using translations from the memory databases to reduce repetitive work for the translators. RWS's real-time NMT platform, Language Weaver, is powered by AI models. It continually optimizes translation quality through built-in feedback loops between quality assessment outcomes, generative output and expert-in-the-loop translations. On this foundation, RWS launched Evolve, a groundbreaking linguistic AI solution, in November 2023, which provides intelligent optimization suggestions for real-time translation work, further shortening the time required to achieve high-quality results. Meanwhile, our IP translators have established robust quality control mechanisms to ensure that AI-assisted translations meet the highest standards. RWS believes that only through human-machine collaboration can we offer clients a superior service experience," James explained.
"In the process of protecting IP in overseas markets, ensuring that innovative information is conveyed accurately across different languages is fundamental. The cost of getting it wrong can lead to drastic intended scope change of patent protection," James stated. "In the IP sector, we appreciate that we are not just translating content; we are translating the fabric of innovation. The RWS's language specialists and IP experts are always dedicated to delivering high-quality IP translations to ensure that every innovation receives the most precise global protection."
Supporting customers with multiple solutions and complete flexibility across the IP life-cycle
Translation is the leading service of RWS. Based on the accumulated market trust, RWS has developed a full chain of IP services covering the entire innovation life-cycle, which includes multilingual translation, foreign patent filing, patent search, patent annuity management, patent operation and patent enforcement. This approach ensures the realization of local impact on a global scale. Furthermore, the extreme flexibility of RWS's IP services also distinguishes the company from similar service providers.
In recent years, RWS has developed a variety of highly flexible solutions to meet diverse client needs. "RWS does not position ourselves as a ‘one-stop shop' that our customers must use. Instead, we take pride in offering flexible, best-of-breed solutions. A good example of this philosophy is apparent within our industry-leading foreign filing platform--inovia," remarked James. inovia enjoys a global network of IP experts and agents, through which RWS serves over 17,000 global clients, including those in China. According to James, clients can choose services such as PCT national phase entry, European validation and direct filling, and obtain all the associated translation services and quotes easily. Once an order is placed, customers and filling agents can interact within a connected workflow so as to track and monitor progress of fillings.
With 19 years of experience in patent annuity management, James took the topic further: "Clients can also select whether RWS should manage the forthcoming annuities due--either for the annuity due before grant or for all subsequent annuities," he continued. According to him, clients are primarily concerned with six core pillars when it comes to patent annuity management: cost reduction, comprehensive data verification, flexible service models, locally rooted and globally connected service providers, complete process supports, and secure payments. "As a professional with nearly two decades experience in annuity management, I understand the complexities of currency conversion and project cost management. Clients always expect transparency and stability in cost management, which RWS's solutions perfectly address. We provide clients with certainty." James went on to share, "Faced with the possibility of different fees at each annual fee reminder due to real-time foreign exchange update, RWS helps customers stabilize their fees with the ‘Price Freeze' feature, which means that they have the option to instruct a price freeze when the first annual fee reminder arrives; as a result, the second reminder of the fee will remain the same as the first, thus ensuring budget certainty."
At present, the global IP landscape is going through a rapid evolution which generates a huge amount of dynamic data, presenting challenges in determining milestones in IP management processes. How to ensure data accuracy and timeliness? "This is where RWS's comprehensive data validation service comes into play. Our data cover nearly 100 jurisdictions around the globe. We also employ a comprehensive data validation process, which checks for and continually monitors changes to keywords ever since a patent portfolio is launched. It will then double-check data sources and billing contents to ensure the accuracy of expiration dates and billing information. Again, the RWS Patent Renewals service is highly flexible, offering tailored reminder cycles and service models to match clients' unique preferences for annuity payments and budget workflows."
To protect IP at every stage of its life-cycle, the importance of patent search cannot be overstated. It is another key component of RWS's IP solutions. At RWS, clients can choose between traditional (routine) and crowd-based searching according to their specific needs. James explained that RWS uses PatBase, a patent search database, at an early stage to provide a solid foundation for its traditional search services. In addition, RWS's in-house search team provides search and panoramic analysis services to R&D and IP staff across the IP life-cycle, covering freedom to operate (FTO), novelty (patentability), invalidity, evidence of use, etc. RWS's crowdsourcing search service is particularly unique in the industry. The cutting-edge approach brings researchers around the world together and offers rewards to the best result providers for challenging search tasks, breaking language, regional, and mindset barriers. It is suitable for invalidity searches, evidence of use (evidence of infringement) searches, landscape searches, and IP monitoring (such as competitor monitoring, technology innovation monitoring and inventor activity monitoring). RWS' AOP (Article One Partners) Connect platform brings together more than 42,000 researchers to help companies identify patent portfolio information they need to proactively protect. Projects published on the platform can be centrally managed online to ensure that the commissioning party understands and monitors project progress in real-time.
Asked about the future layout of RWS's IP solutions, James revealed: "In the future, RWS will reinforce the ‘Genuine Intelligence' concept in our products and solutions. We will continue to invest in the Chinese market, including product R&D and staff expansion."
Pooling global resources to respond to China's needs, leading the way to deliver high-standard international IP services
"As a global engine for innovation and growth, the Chinese market holds significant importance for RWS. Our primary goal, both now and in the future, is to serve Chinese clients effectively with impactful intellectual property solutions that help them realize innovation value on a global scale," expressed James.
At present, the RWS IP team in China comprises over 150 professionals, including language experts, solution specialists, project managers, and professional consultants. "We have a ‘One RWS Principle' because trust among ourselves forms a strong internal cohesion, enabling us to face challenges together. RWS advocates the EDGE concept: Efficient, Delivery, Growth, and Engagement. We are constantly striving to grow, become more efficient, ensure our product features align with market trends, and seek maximum engagement from our diverse team," James stated.
"Today, China's emerging industries are accelerating their participation in key global markets, while traditional industries are becoming more sophisticated in their overseas IP strategies. This undoubtedly requires service providers to have the ability to solve complex problems globally and respond to diverse demands quickly, or else they will be left behind in the market. The RWS China team has been aware of these trends since the early days of serving Chinese clients. Looking ahead, we will continue to support our clients' goals and help them realize the local impact of their global IP strategies," James concluded.
