In some instances, it may be necessary to file drawings of your invention with your Nonprovisional (Utility) Patent Application.
There are two kinds of drawings: formal drawings and informal drawings. Formal drawings meet a lot of requirements from the USPTO you can read them here. All 16,000 words of them.
There is a lot including a prohibition on grayscale, a paper size requirement, shading requirements (see to left). There are rules on photographs, color usage and literally dozens of other things. To be honest, I don’t even do my own drawings, I have that contracted out, and I suppose anyone could do that. The trick knowing what to ask the drafter to draw up for you.
For most applications, you will need a schematic of a system or control logic, a detail view of a machine or tool, and an exploded view of anything you can’t buy off the shelf. A non-provisional patent application requires formal drawings a provisional application can be filed with either formal or informal drawings.
In general, informal drawings are fine for a provisional application. I can tell you the views that you need to draw, and you can send those. If things are a little further along and you have a technical manual that’s fine too, I can work from that.
Some applications do not require drawings such as chemicals and enzymes. I don’t do a whole lot of work in that field, so odds are, if you have that, you are not coming to me.
If you fail to file drawings and the USPTO figures that you need them, it will not give you a filing date. This is a big deal because it can affect the patentability of your invention as a result of prior art that arose between when you filed the application and when you filed it correctly.
This is the eighth and final post of my series on How To Patent An Idea within my Patents content hub. I hope you enjoyed it, as it was a joy for me to write.
If you’re reading out of order, no worries! Click here to go back to the first post, How To Patent An Idea—A Gross Oversimplification.