Patent drawings could be of immense use if it is provided right at the appropriate time.
No matter whether you are going to file a utility patent or a design patent for your invention, an accurate patent drawing will convey your invention in a much more proper manner. With a detailed and clear utility patent drawing or design patent drawing, people can help examiners to understand their inventions properly thus we can say that an accurate, clear drawings strengthen and enhance patent applications, helping overloaded patent examiners to understand inventions faster.
All we can say that “A picture speaks a thousand words.” That ancient adage certainly holds true in the case of patent drawings.
This article is aimed at underlining some good practices that can help inventors make their patent application easy to understand:
Tips on Creating Patent Drawings
Paper Quality: Drawings submitted to the patent office like United States Patent and Trademark Office / USPTO or European Patent Office/ EPO must be made on paper which is flexible, strong, white, smooth, non-shiny, and durable. The paper used to create drawings of your invention should be devoid of any kind of folds or creases so that they can be electronically reproduced in future. The paper size should be 21.6 cm wide and 27.9 cm long.
Care should be taken while creating the margins as there shouldn’t be anything written in the margins. The margins of the paper should be like this:
Top & Left Margin: 2.5 cm
Right Margin: 1.5 cm
Bottom Margin: 1.0 cm
Maintaining the Correct Proportions: Draw all the elements of the same figure in proportion to each other unless a difference in proportion is essential to make the drawing clear.
Using Color: Inventors should refrain from using color in their patent illustrations or patent drawings except in rare cases. The lines used in the drawing should be well-defined, dense and dark so that they can be accurately reproduced in future.
Numbering Elements of a Drawing: Numbering the elements of a utility patent drawing or a design patent drawing is one of the most important elements of crafting a killer patent drawing. The USPTO particularly prefers every element of drawings to be numbered so that they can have a clear outlook of the invention or design.
Assembling Drawings: If you have multiple patent illustrations or patent drawings you are required to assemble all your patent drawing in a single document so that that the whole drawing can be assembled without concealing any of the individual figures.
To sum-it up we can say that creating a utility patent drawing or design patent drawing is something that requires clear-cut understanding of the concerned invention, in-depth understanding of patent regulatory norms and expertise in drafting patent applications.
