Patent Office Drawing Rules.
U. S. PATENT OFFICE RULES.
AS APPLIED TO PREPARATION OF DRAWINGS.
Each applicant for a patent is required by law to furnish a drawing of his invention whenever the nature of the case admits of it. The drawing must be signed by the inventor or the name of the inventor may be signed on the drawing by his attorney-in-fact, and in either case must be attested by two witnesses. The drawing must show every feature of the invention covered by the claims.
When the invention consists of an improvement on an old machine, the drawing must exhibit, in one or more views, the invention proper, disconnected from the old structure, and also, in another view, so much only of the old structure as will clearly show the connection of the invention with the old machine.
Several editions of the patent-drawings are printed, the smallest of which is about 3 × 43⁄4 inches, so that the drawing must be so made that it will stand a reduction of about one-fourth. This work is done by the photo-lithographic process, and therefore the character of the original drawing must be brought as nearly as possible to a uniform standard of excellence suited to the requirements of the process.
Note.—These rules will be found most useful to many readers of this work—hence their introduction at this point. Nearly 50,000 patents are “applied for” in the United States every year.
The following rules are given by the Patent Office for guidance:
1. Drawings must be made upon pure white paper of a thickness corresponding to three-sheet Bristol board. The surface of the paper must be calendered and smooth. India ink alone must be used, so as to secure perfectly black and solid lines.
2. The size of a sheet on which a drawing is made must be exactly 10 × 15 inches. One inch from its edges a single marginal line is to be drawn, leaving the “sight” precisely 8 × 13 inches. Within this margin all work and signatures must be included. One of the shorter sides of the sheet is regarded as its top, and measuring downwardly from the marginal line, a space of not less than 11⁄4 inches is to be left blank for the heading of title, name, number and date.