9.1.3 Language of the documents cited 

Members of the same patent family are often published in various different languages. The search division therefore has a choice as to the language in which it wishes to cite such a document in the search report. If the relevant technical content of the various family members is the same and they were all published before the earliest priority date of the application, they are all equally relevant to the application. The search division chooses which one of them to cite by looking at the languages they were published in and applying the following order of preference:

(1) an official EPO language (i.e. English, French or German (Art. 14(1))

(2) an official language of an EPC contracting state under Art. 14(4) (see A‑VII, 1.1) ‒ the document can usually be read by a colleague if the search division member in charge is not familiar with this language (see B‑VI, 6.2)

(3) a language other than those of the EPC contracting states. 

In cases (2) and (3), the search division might consider citing an abstract in an official EPO language instead of the original document.

If the original document is in a language the search division cannot readily understand (e.g. Chinese or Russian), it is best to cite the abstract. It is possible to obtain a machine translation of a patent document into an official EPO language. This machine translation will be made available to the applicant (see B‑X, 12 and G‑IV, 4).

Alternatively, if only a specific paragraph of the machine translation is needed, the search division may copy that paragraph into the search opinion, but the full machine translation will be made available to the applicant as well.

Non-official translations (i.e. translations with no legal value) of publications in a language the search division cannot readily understand (e.g. Russian, Japanese, Korean or Chinese) will not be cited in the search report.