Drawings in Design Patent Application : Design patent allow any person who invents any new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture to obtain a patent protection. In a design patent, the design of an article or its primarily ornamental purpose is, generally, the sole consideration for obtaining the design patent.
Drawings in Design Patent Application
Typically, the drawings in a design patent application are administered by the same rules and illustrative styles that are used for utility patents. Some of the common features that are required in the drawings in a design patent application are:
- The features that pertains to the claimed ornamental design shall be shown in solid lines; and the unclaimed features (for example, the environment surrounding the claimed design) can be depicted by using broken lines. This use of different lines allows the claimed design to be distinguished from the environment that is not part of the claims.
- The drawings should be appropriately shaded to clearly show the character and contour of the surfaces represented. Shading becomes particularly important when showing three-dimensional articles, such as to differentiate between plain and round surfaces, or to distinguish between open and closed areas of the claimed design.
- Boundaries of the claimed design can be particularly defined by using broken lines, and specifically dot-dashed lines. This helps to better understand the overall message conveyed by the claimed design to an ordinary observer, and thus may be helpful to define the scope of the design patent application.
- Broken lines can also be used to show different embodiments of an invention, for example the complete article along with the design is shown in one embodiment in all solid lines (where the environment forms part of the design feature) and another embodiment includes broken lines to specifically highlight the environment and distinguish the claimed design feature by distinguishable solid lines.
- Broken lines may further be used to represent an object when its length is indeterminate relative to the other elements/features of the claimed design. That is, an object with indeterminate length may be shown extending using broken lines.
