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

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Drawing Size - 37 CFR 1.84(k)

"The scale to which a drawing is made must be large enough to show the mechanism without crowding when the drawing is reduced in size to two-thirds in reproduction." - PTO

The inputs provided by the client to finalize drawings are in different forms, like images, pdf, PowerPoint slides, word documents, Visio and even sometimes videos. Most of the times, it is required to trace the images and update or edit the drawings as per the requirements of the invention. It is very important that the drawing should be scaled up properly so that it's all features are clearly visible.

"37 CFR 1.84(k)" of Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (USPTO) states clearly, "Indications such as "actual size" or "scale 1/2" on the drawings are not permitted since these lose their meaning with reproduction in a different format."

"Rule 11.13 (c)" of PCT under Physical Requirements of the International Application states, "The scale of the drawings and the distinctness of their graphical execution shall be such that a photographic reproduction with a linear reduction in size to two-thirds would enable all details to be distinguished without difficulty."

Here I want to cite an example for a published patent US20200176086A1. I received an 'Invitation to correct defects'. There were few reasons for the rejection and one of them was the size of the drawing and height of the text.

Invitation to correct defects

Non standard text height and drawing scale

Corrected Fig. 5

I came across many such cases. So, please contact experienced patent drawing illustrators to finalize your drawing to avoid rejections.

You may reach out to me if you want any guidance or help related to patent drawings. Feel free to drop me an e-mail at info@desillus.com or call me at 1-647-403-7719