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Written by : Leonardo Dearring |
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thanks for joining me we're gonna be talking about patent drawings so a patent drawing is the drawings that you use in the patent to represent the invention now typically you would have come up with some kind of drawings as part of the you know prototyping process or sketching out the idea so you can start with those drawings now patent drawings can be derived from CAD drawings as well so if you have CAD drawings you're one step ahead already we're going to be looking at black and white line drawings of the various angles of your intervention so we can start with a perspective view first of all there are four different types of views generally that you'll be looking at in the patent drawings the first is a perspective or isometric view so that's where you're looking now if you can conceptualize a cube so your invention is in the middle of the cube you can look through the sides at the top or the front a perspective view is from the corner so perspective view gives you sort of two to three sides of the object at once and it lets you know how the components are situated relative to one another and it gives some perspective so it provides a notion of depth which other drawings may not the second type of drawing is an elevation view so that's where you're looking at the front of the cube so you're looking like you look at the front of a building it's just straight up and down in front of you so there's no depth really it's just it's the view from one side it doesn't show any of the other sides now from if you see it from the top it's called a plan view so a plan view might show like you know I think the name comes from architectural planning or or land planning but the plan view shows the object from above and then the fourth major type is the cutaway it's a cutaway is where one side of the object is kind of removing the drawings and you can see within the object you can see the components there so cutaway shows you know cut throughs of various surfaces on the drawings and so on so when you have your drawings together to show the invention you're going to want to organize them so they they kind of tell a story and lead the examiner through the invention so usually we start with a perspective then we're looking at some elevation and plan views of the various components and then a cutaway will show detail of various embodiments so you can use a cutaway from a couple of different planes and so on and then in the description of figures you're going to want to describe each figure as you see it so figure one is a perspective or isometric view of the coffee maker according to one embodiment of the invention so you want to make sure that each drawing is is only representative of a certain embodiment not the entirety of the invention itself so figure two would be you know a plan view of the invention of the coffee maker figure three might be a elevation view and figure four it might be a cutaway view of the detail and those are the four different types of views you might have so if you don't have drawings already you'll need to put some together for a provisional patent application the drawings can be you know photograph so they can be hand-drawn sketches for a non-provisional though there are more serious requirements including black and white line drawings and whirring of the features in accordance with the description and we'll get to that later but you need for the non-provisional you need to show every feature that you're going to be describing okay now to take you through these drawings we have figure one here it's been blown up this is through the Google patents interface but you'll see this on the publication as well so it's black and white line drawings that make up the drawing so you can see this is a perspective view it comes from an angle so you see kind of two surfaces you'll see the top of here and you'll see some of the side view along here some of the features underneath if it was just a top view this coffee feature wouldn't appear so this hot water container has some curvature so the the curvature lines help to show that and this perspective view will give you some measure of depth so the the curvature here helps to show that it's you know not just a white blob it has some shape and some depth each of the elements is identified by a line and a reference numeral so the reference numeral here 33 or 136 these are drawn in by hand even though the drawing is a you know professional line drawing and they will correspond with the you know the paragraph in the description that deals with those elements so you need to check after the description and the drawings are all complete you need to check that those numbers correspond because an error in those you know the correspondence of those numbers can cause you significant problems down the line okay so that was a perspective view here's another angle of it actually the same view it's just rotated this is a cutaway view so this is a cutaway from the point of view of the like the pressure shaft the pressure pump aspect so the surface is here where they're not Hollow this is the shaft is hollow so you can see it has fill these surfaces though are a solid material that's been cut away so they have a hatching in them to show that they are solid material and not just an empty empty space and here similar this is a different material this has a different hatching again the reference numerals along this line here and just ensure that the limestone don't interfere with your hatching and then we have the the final view here is from the other side it's a cutaway from the other side and actually cuts away through the hot water and coffee container again there's hatching in the coffee area there's hatching in this material along here which forms the outer casing of the hot water container and then the the pressure shaft is ghosted in behind so it's not really shown in this view it's behind this so you can show it as a ghost but generally what we're doing here is this is the inventive aspects of the invention so the inventor wants to show these aspects in detail and that's why the cutaway view so we can see what's going on inside and we can describe what is new and how it works
Thanks for your comment Lamar Stanforth, have a nice day.
- Leonardo Dearring, Staff Member
hello and welcome to inventors quick tips in this episode we will be covering the basics of patent drawings or illustrations and what they need to show note that this episode covers drawings for regular patent applications for provisional patent applications there are no formatting rules most any drawing is accepted for regular patent applications there are rules and also some best practices a short episode doesn't give time to cover everything but the goal here is to give you some insight into what those drawings need to show and first and foremost two drawings need to cover what you have claimed but beyond that they need to show how to make and use the invention basically that is called enablement in general there are lots of different ways you can show something in a patent figure and it all depends on the invention some inventions won't require all these types of drawings but most inventions will utilize at least one of the types you see here and yes it is true that some patents out there do not have any drawings at all but that is the exception rather than the rule so let's take a quick look at some examples let's say I invented this food cart now I could show a perspective view like this and note these are not patent drawings but rather just illustrations of my invention however I could give these to a patent attorney or patent drafting service and they could easily turn this drawing into a formal patent drawing and we'll get into what a formal patent drawing looks like in a few minutes but for now let's identify a few parts of my food cart we have some legs over here we got shelves on each side a roof cover thingy and some wheels now with those parts in mind let's look at some other views we may want to show if we were going to prepare a patent application for this cart here is a top view as if looking down at the cart from above here's a bottom view as if I was underneath a glass floor looking up at the cart a left side view in the right side view and note in cases where the right view and left you are identical it's a common practice to just include one side view however if the left and right sides of something are not identical then showing both sides is advisable here's the front view where we see the cart legs and the back view where we see the wheels of the cart so as I mentioned these are not patent drawings but just to give you an idea of the angles or views we typically need to show and when in doubt show the drawing view as a matter of practice for most any mechanical thing I include that all those use because you never know what you're going to need as you try to get your patent application through the Patent Office so in general I'd rather have a few extra drawings and not enough drawings but this is a simple food cart let's take a look at some other drawings that a patent may use if we have important internal components let's show them some inventions especially software manufacturing processes and then the other kinds of processes will likely benefit from flowcharts inventions that do something to something else benefit from before-and-after drawings here as you see in Figure 6 we have this little vertical structure and then as part of a process we add a coating on to that vertical structure this is part of a semiconductor patent application so it involves adding a coating of material onto that little vertical piece and in the patent application as you're describing how the structure is made you want to show each step of layers being added or removed so this covers certain types of drawings now let's take a peek at what actually goes into a patent drawing so here is a basic patent drawing of a bicycle shoe on a bicycle pedal and let's just take a look at a couple key parts arrows such as reference 12 here are used to designate a group of parts in this case the entire shoe lead lines are the black lines that extend from a number to apart so here for number twenty one end should be very close to the number without touching it and the other end touches the part so the reference here number twenty refers to the petal that the shoe is on top of the lead line should never be mistaken as part of the invention so I preferred the lead line style here that shows the lead lines with a slight curve you notice each of these lead lines such as that of number twenty are slightly curved sometimes lead lines are dotted such as when they point to a dotted line or shape in a patent drawing the dotted lines typically refer to things that are not visible some internal components basically showing what is inside or behind an object numbers with an underline refer to the object that they are actually on in this case the rear portion of that shoe this technique is used sometimes when the lead line is not practical such as due to limitations in space each figure should be labeled a plain arial font is good for that although in some older patents it's not unusual to see very ornate figure now here's another drawing example for a portable boxing heavy bag for training and it's an older patent as you can see it has a very ornate figure eight at the bottom but the key things I want to show you for this drawing are first the shading the shading can be done with lines close together or dots here it serves the purpose of helping identify object number fourteen as a solid cushion the shading helps us understand that it is of a cylindrical shape also let's take a look at what isn't shown the rules are that you need to show enough detail to enable somebody skilled in this field to make an easy invention we don't need an illustration on par with a Norman Rockwell painting for the person that's using the punching bag all we need is enough detail to show how somebody uses the punching bag so the actual person that's punching the bag here in this figure is a pretty basic detail here's another example using and exploded you so this is some kind of pliers and the exploded view is very good for showing internal parts that may not be visible in the completed pliers and also helps show how they go together in the completed product so here we see all these little washers and Springs and how they actually would be as fit together to make the pliers here it's an excerpt from a flowchart of a patent and these are easily done on a computer with a PowerPoint or Visio or so let's do a quick utility patent drawings recap and by the way utility patent basically means a regular patent so let's recap some key facts usually they are black and white line drawings every feature specified in the claims must be on a drawing and you want to have a reference number for it so all necessary views remember we went over some of the most popular views in patents you don't need to have all the parts aren't exactly to scale and you typically don't indicate dimensions now the drawings in most cases are black and white line drawings but in some circumstances photographs can be used here's an example of an informal drawing versus a formal drawing for the same thing on the Left obviously is the informal drawing for an invention and on the right is the corresponding formal drawing th
Thanks Roslyn your participation is very much appreciated
- Leonardo Dearring
About the author
I've studied medical cybernetics at Calvin University in Grand Rapids and I am an expert in information system. I usually feel listless. My previous job was explosives worker I held this position for 19 years, I love talking about glassblowing and shopping. Huge fan of Bill Nye I practice equestrian: jumping and collect autographed baseballs.
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