Making Your Own Patent Drawings
Can't draw a straight line? Don't worry, new computer programs can. Better yet, they can erase them.
You've invented something wonderful. You've even prepared rough sketches and the written part of the patent application yourself, saving thousands of dollars by not hiring a patent attorney or agent to do the work for you. Now, there's one more hurdle, and it looks pretty intimidating: preparing the drawings that must accompany your application and fully disclose the invention's structure. You're no draftsman, much less an artist. Have you reached the end of the do-it-yourself road?
Many inventors turn the job of preparing drawings over to a professional draftsperson. This can be costly. Typically, you'll pay $75 to $150 per sheet of patent drawings, each of which may contain several figures or drawings. Because most patent applications have two or more sheets of drawings, you can easily shell out many hundreds of dollars per patent application.
Fortunately, if you can do the patent application, you can probably do the patent drawings yourself, too. You'll need to learn some U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rules, and there's a certain learning curve. But there are many rewards. In addition to saving a ton of money on the application, you will be able to prepare promotional brochures for prospective manufacturers or customers. And because you know your invention best, you may be able to render your invention more accurately than a hired professional. By doing your own drawings, you do not have to make someone else understand your invention, or send drawings back and forth for corrections. Finally, you will have the great satisfaction of completing the entire patent application by yourself -- an impressive accomplishment for an inventor.
Here are the various ways you can create your own drawings:
Black and White Drawings
The traditional way of making patent drawings is with pen and ruler, in black and white. The basic tools are inexpensive, but drawing is fairly difficult because you must use India ink. There is little room for mistakes; except for very small marks, it is difficult to correct misplaced ink lines. Also, you must learn basic drawing techniques, especially how to draw perspective views that show all the features of your invention. One trick that helps for some inventions is to trace photographs onto paper.
Color Drawings
If it's necessary to illustrate your invention properly, color drawings (and color photographs) may also be used. In order to do so, you'll have to file three sets of the color illustrations, complete a petition explaining why color is necessary, pay a petition fee and include a statement in your patent application that it contains color drawings.
Photographs
Black and white photos are rarely used and will only be accepted in applications in which the invention is not capable of being illustrated in an ink drawing or where the invention is shown more clearly in a photograph -- for example, photographs or photomicrographs of electrophoresis gels, cell cultures, animals, plants, or crystalline structures.
Computer Drawing Software
If you are artistically and photographically challenged, modern computer-aided drawing (CAD) programs are close to miraculous. They let you produce accurate drawings even if you qualify as a certified drafting dunce. In fact, you don't need any drawing skills in the traditional sense. And you can correct mistakes as easily as you correct typos with a word processor.
CAD software programs, however, are not cheap; suitable ones are available for one to several hundred dollars. Optional but helpful equipment includes a scanner and digital camera.
If you have a scanner, you can scan a photograph and import the scanned image into a CAD program. If you have a digital camera, you can photograph the object and transfer the image directly to your computer through a cable. Once it's there, tracing it is easy (and because you use a mouse instead of a pen, you don't even need a steady hand to trace the image).
You can also use a CAD program to draw your invention from scratch. For this, you'll be better off with a program that lets you construct a three-dimensional representation of your invention by using and modifying geometric building blocks. You can then manipulate the model to produce different views and perspectives.
To read and printout a copy of the Form please link below.
Checklist: Why and How You Should Document Your Invention
You can download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader here.
Copyright 2006 Nolo
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