Industrial Design Drawings

"In a legal sense, an industrial design constitutes the ornamental or aesthetic aspect of an article.

An industrial design may consist of three-dimensional features, such as the shape of an article, or two-dimensional features, such as patterns, lines or colour." - WIPO

Some tips while creating Industrial Design Drawings:

• The most important thing while creating industrial design drawings is that all the orthographic views should match each other with the projection lines.

• Whatever is visible in the perspective view should be visible in the corresponding orthographic views.

• The shading style used in the perspective view should match with the corresponding orthographic views.

• Unclaimed parts, in which the product is embodied, visible in the perspective view should be visible in the corresponding orthographic views.

• If all the required views are perspective in nature, try to keep the scale size similar in all the views.

Following these simple tips will reduce the chances of rejection and avoid any delay in the patent grant.

I want to cite an example here. I received this case with an office action stating "The drawing disclosure meets the requirements of 37 CFR §1.84; however, the drawings are objected to as follows:

• The nonelected embodiment of Figs. 9 and 10 must be deleted from the drawings."

There were many small discrepancies in the views. I edited all the views as instructed in the office action and the patent granted and published. Here are the details from the office action.

For any assistance in patent drawings illustration, feel free to drop an e-mail at info@desillus.com

To see work done in Desillus Solutions Inc. please visit www.desillus.com

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A Self-disciplined person - Captain Borah, Sunny Koka...

Though his actual name is Premadhar Borah, he is known by many names as Prem Da, Borah Da, Captian Borah, Captain Sahab, Sunny Koka. For me and my brother, he is our "Dadi" - the distorted form of Daddy as pronounced by my Maa. Later when we realized the right pronunciation, we hesitate to call him "Dadi" in front of other people, so we go close to him.

He is having a very annoying personality for me. Almost every time our conversations end with an argument. My Maa never argues with him as it is of no use to her. He is having a personality of an Angry Man and that too from an Army background. Despite his such personality, I have learnt a lot of good things from him. He is a man of self-discipline, very honest, sincere about his work. In his career, he got 3 consecutive promotions in just one year. From "Subedar" to "Captain". I have seen how sincere he was with his job. In 1996, when our financial condition was not very good and my brother got admission to Jorhat Engineering College, Dadi took a job in Baruah X-ray clinic. And at that time I have seen his dedication to learning new things. Though he was not from a science background, he learned all the required science chapter for ultrasound and sono-scan from my textbooks. And in just a few months he was able to byheart all the reports.

There are a few things that I have learnt from him -

• A disciplined lifestyle - Fix time to get up and sleep, fix times for meals.

• Afternoon nap - No matters where he is or who came to our house, he will take his nap around 1 pm daily.

• A jolly-carefree person - Where my Maa takes all the stress of closing the doors and keeping her ears and eyes open for any unusual things, Dadi doesn't bother about all these things. He is a very cool person, always busy with his programs on TV. Very fond of sports, especially cricket. He never gets bored watching even old cricket matches.

• A caring and helpful person - He guided so many people in our neighbourhood with how to fill forms, how to calculate pension, DA, how to open RD in the post office and banks. He is an animal lover and I have seen that with our cow - Mainee, Rani, Bhula, Mainu, our cock Bhola and our beloved dog Sunny. People recognize him with our dog and so-called him "Sunny Koka" or "Sunny Bortta"

• A learner - At the age of 83 he is keen to learn new things. I am surprised to see him operating the mobile phone so efficiently.

I hope me and my brother have inherited many of his qualities and we are really proud of him, our "Dadi".

4 Most Common Rejection By USPTO or PCT

Its been almost 15 years working on patent drawings. I have worked on thousands of cases. When a new invention requires every view from scratch, many times the client approaches me with drawings rejected by USPTO (The United States Patent and Trademark Office) or PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty - The International Patent System - WIPO). While working on these Office Actions and Invitation to correct defects, I realized, there are most common rejections, for example, small text height, blur drawings, poor line quality, drawings going out of the margins, inconsistent views etc.

There are some basic guidelines from the USPTO and PCT about how to create the drawings for patent filing. Well, their guidelines are so descriptive that it is sometimes difficult to understand the basic requirements. In this article, I tried to emphasize 4 basic rejections. Hope this will help the inventors and other illustrators to create the drawings to overcome those rejections.

Sheet Margin Rejection

A very common rejection is the drawing out of the margins.

Here are the guidelines:

A4 Sheet or Letter -

top margin - 2.5 cm (1 inch),

left-side margin - 2.5 cm (1 inch),

right-side margin - 1.5 cm (5/8 inch),

bottom margin - 1 cm (3/8 inch)

Before creating the drawings for patent filing, it is always better to create your own template with the required margins.

Scale up or down the required drawing to make a fit into the borderline. Also, it is always good to use the entire sheet space wisely to give a good quality view.

Rejected

Corrected

Line Quality

Another common rejection from PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) is the poor line quality of the drawing.

PTO has guidelines about the coloured images used. To minimize the use of ink, it is better to use the drawings in the line art form.

Also, drawings need further reproduction, therefore, it is necessary for the drawings to be clear and with uniform line thickness. The lightest weight of the line used for even shading should not be less than 0.1mm.

Rejected

Corrected

Text Height

The most common rejection I came across is the small text height. As per PTO guidelines, the height of the letters should not be less than 0.32 cm.

Well, to overcome this rejection, it is always better to use the letter heights of point 12 or more. If you are creating drawings in AutoCAD, it is always better to use text height of 0.13"

Rejected

Corrected

Grayscale Drawings

One more very common drawing objection by PTO is the grayscale drawings. Coloured drawings are allowed in the patent filing are those in which the colour of the invention matters. For example, the heat maps, or any chemical treatment in which there is a change in the texture of the product. Below is an example in which grayscale drawing is allowed.

An example where a coloured drawing is allowed.

If a drawing can be shown with lines, then the PTO will object to the grayscale drawings. So, it is always better to create the line art form of the drawings.

Rejected

Corrected

If you follow these guidelines, it will save your patent from rejections and save your efforts for reapplying and cost of illustrating them again.

There are a few more rejections like inconsistency in the views, reference numbers marked in the drawings which are not mentioned in the drawing specification, the wrong orientation of view etc. I will cover them in my next article.

If you need any assistance in illustrating your patent drawings you may drop me an email at info@desillus.com or call me at +1-647-403-7719