Our Approach to Patent Drawings

• If you are filing a Utility Patent application, you may submit informal drawings, such as hand sketches, and later replace them with professional drawings after the patent has been allowed. The advantage of this approach is reduced upfront drafting costs if the application is ultimately rejected.
• However, there are also disadvantages. If the patent examiner cannot clearly interpret the drawings, has difficulty distinguishing your invention from prior art, or must spend excessive time understanding how the drawings relate to the written description, these factors may negatively affect the likelihood of approval.
• A patent application should be viewed as a professional presentation to the examiner. Just as you would not use rough sketches when presenting to a prospective client, informal drawings may not create the strongest presentation for your invention.
• For Design and Plant Patent applications, professional formal drawings are especially important. In these types of applications, the drawings are the primary basis of the patent. If informal drawings are submitted, they will typically be rejected, and the examiner will require formal drawings to be filed within a specified period, often 90 days.
• At that stage, however, you are generally limited to the original informal drawings as the basis of the application. New matter cannot be added after filing, which can make it difficult to prepare high-quality formal drawings without exceeding the scope of the original submission. As a result, the final drawings may lack the precision and artistic quality often associated with strong Design Patents. In many cases, correcting or formalizing poor informal drawings later can also require more time and expense than preparing professional drawings from the beginning.

In a design application, filing with informal drawings could easily trigger a fatal rejection.
**Filing fees and attorney fees are non-refundable.**