Structural Compliance — Case Study Library
4 Critical Morpho-Syntactic Constraints in Patent Translation
Generic LLMs optimize for linguistic naturalness. Patent law demands rigid structural formalism. These case studies document the binary constraints that generic models violate — and the alignment protocols that enforce legally compliant output.
Verb Nominalization
Method Claims with "comprising"
In French patent practice, when a method claim uses "comprising" (comprenant), subsequent steps must be nominalized (turned into nouns), not left as infinitive verbs. Generic NMT models default to infinitive constructions because they are statistically more common in non-patent French, creating legally invalid claim structures that risk rejection under EPC Art. 84.
View Case Studies →Article Distinction
Antecedent Basis & Referential Integrity
Patent claims function as closed loops where article choice is binary legal logic. "A/an" introduces new elements; "the/said" references previously defined elements. Generic models treat articles as low-value tokens, frequently deleting definite pointers in complex quantifiers and introducing "New Matter" that renders claims unenforceable under 35 U.S.C. § 112.
View Case Studies →Genitive Forms
Class vs. Instance — Prepositional Scope
The choice of preposition (de, du, or Zero-Marker) defines the engineering relationship between components. Generic NMT models harbor a "Definiteness Bias," habitually inserting specific articles to improve fluency. This creates false antecedent dependencies or anglicized calques that fail French technical grammar requirements.
View Case Studies →Syntactic Linearity
Complex Noun Phrases & Modification Scope
English technical nomenclature is Head-Final (Modifiers + Noun), whereas French is Head-Initial (Noun + Modifiers). Generic NMT models suffer from "Linearity Bias," processing tokens sequentially without performing the necessary syntactic inversion, producing lists of unrelated items rather than single compound terms and creating legally indefinite claims.
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