Abiding the Rules of 37 CFR 1.121 : All amendments made in the patent drawing should be in accordance with Title 37 – Code of Federal Regulations Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights. Any amendment made beyond the scope of this rule will not be entertained by the respective PTO.

Amendments must be on separate sheet: One of the most important amendment rules for patent drawing is that each section of an amendment document (e.g., Specification Amendments, Claim Amendments, Drawing Amendments, and Remarks) must begin on a separate sheet to facilitate separate indexing and electronic scanning of each section of an amendment document for placement in an image file wrapper.

Maintaining the appropriate format for patent drawing:

Maintaining the appropriate format prior to making amendment in a patent drawing is important. Failing to maintain the required format could put your objective in jeopardy. Below are the required formats a draft person should consider while making an amendment in patent drawing.

(A) a cover sheet, or introductory comments, providing the appropriate application information (e.g., application number, applicant, filing date) and which serves as a table of contents to the amendment document by indicating on what page of the amendment document each of the following sections begins.

(B) a section (must begin on a separate sheet) entitled “Amendments to the Specification” (if there are any amendments to the specification). This section should include all amendments to the specification including amendments to the abstract of the disclosure.

(C) a section (must begin on a separate sheet) entitled “Amendments to the Claims” which includes a complete listing of all claims ever presented in the application (if there are any amendments to the claims).

(D) a section (must begin on a separate sheet) entitled “Amendments to the Drawings” in which all changes to the drawings are discussed (if there are any amendments to the drawings).

(E) a remarks section (must begin on a separate sheet); and any drawings being submitted including any “Replacement Sheet,” “New Sheet,” or “Annotated Sheet.”

No New Matter Rule :

According to the U.S. PTO no new matter can be added while amending a patent application, the same holds true for patent drawings as well. According to the Code of Federal Regulations 37 CFR 1.121 (f) “No amendment may introduce new matter into the disclosure of an application.” In other words, we can say that PTO offers enough scopes to the applicant to amend their patent application, even to the extent of cancelling all of the original claims and submitting new ones, however, it will be valid if we follow the rule of “No New Matter” wherein no new matter is added to the application.

Manner of making amendments in applications: Amendments made in a patent application should be as per the specified rule and here are some manners that we need to follow while amending the application or the adjoining patent drawing.

(a) Amendments in applications, other than reissue applications. Amendments in applications, other than reissue applications, are made by filing a paper, in compliance with § 1.52 , directing that specified amendments be made.

(b) Specification. Amendments to the specification, other than the claims, computer listings (§ 1.96 ) and sequence listings (§ 1.825 ), must be made by adding, deleting or replacing a paragraph, by replacing a section, or by a substitute specification, in the manner specified in this section.

(1) Amendment to delete, replace, or add a paragraph. Amendments to the specification, including amendment to a section heading or the title of the invention which are considered for amendment purposes to be an amendment of a paragraph, must be made by submitting:

(i) An instruction, which unambiguously identifies the location, to delete one or more paragraphs of the specification, replace a paragraph with one or more replacement paragraphs, or add one or more paragraphs;

(ii) The full text of any replacement paragraph with markings to show all the changes relative to the previous version of the paragraph. The text of any added subject matter must be shown by underlining the added text. The text of any deleted matter must be shown by strike-through except that double brackets placed before and after the deleted characters may be used to show deletion of five or fewer consecutive characters. The text of any deleted subject matter must be shown by being placed within double brackets if strikethrough cannot be easily perceived;

(iii) The full text of any added paragraphs without any underlining.

(iv) The text of a paragraph to be deleted must not be presented with strike-through or placed within double brackets. The instruction to delete may identify a paragraph by its paragraph number or include a few words from the beginning, and end, of the paragraph, if needed for paragraph identification purposes.

These are some of the rules, however, there are many other rules those need to be followed while creating a patent drawing or amending it for PTO submission.