How to Find the Right Professional Patent Drawing Service Provider? If you’re a patent attorney, you may be looking for a professional patent drawing service that can provide you with lower costs, better service, higher quality, or faster turnaround time.
If you’re an inventor filing your first patent application on your own, you may be puzzled about how to get your patent illustrations made.
What criteria can you use to find a patent drawing service that best meets your needs?
Find the Right Professional Patent Drawing Service Provider
As we discussed in this previous blog, patent drawings (also known as patent illustrations) are a required part of most patent applications.
Cost
Cost of patent illustrations is only a small part of the overall cost of a patent application.
For example, at Invention Patent Drawings, our prices for a set of patent drawings typically range from $30-60.
Including legal fees, filing a non-provisional patent usually costs between $8,000 and $15,000. Even a very simple patent application can cost $5,000 to $7,000.
A patent illustration firm should be able to give you a fixed price – up front – for how much your patent drawings will cost.
Good patent illustrations can help even a marginal application be accepted by the Patent Office, so it doesn’t pay to cut corners.
Get error-free patent drawings in 4-6 days. Free Unlimited Revisions. Price starts at $30.
Quality
A poor-quality patent illustration can be a waste of money, as the Patent Office may reject the patent application as a result – possibly allowing a competitor to claim the invention first.
How can you tell whether a patent drawing firm provides high quality – especially if you’re never hired one before?
Check Samples
Ask to see samples that a patent illustration company has done for other clients. Preferably, these should be for inventions similar to your own. For example, if you’ve invented something as complex as a new hybrid battery, you don’t want to work with someone who’s never illustrated anything more complex than a new style of comb!
(However, even combs can be surprisingly complex, as the following patent illustration shows.)
When reviewing samples, it’s important to ask about who at the firm made them and who will be working on YOUR patent illustrations. Will your work be done by an experienced draftsperson or by someone newly hired?
At Invention Patent Drawings, we’re so confident about our quality that we offer one free drawing for our new clients. Check whether other patent illustration firms will do the same.
Acceptance Rate
Another measure of quality is how often (or rarely) a patent illustration company’s work is accepted by the relevant Patent Office.
A professional patent drawing firm can keep track of statistics like this and let you know how they rate. At Invention Patent Drawings, we’re proud of our 98% acceptance rate.
Keep in mind that a patent application can be rejected for either technical or substantive reasons.
Technical reasons related to patent drawings are discussed in this blog. These technical aspects are largely within the control of the patent illustrator.
However, even the best patent illustration can’t save an application with defective claims, which are the responsibility of the inventor and the patent attorney.
Experience
Be sure to use a patent illustration company with experience doing patent drawings for the specific Patent Office you’re submitting your application to.
Invention Patent Drawings is headed by a patent illustrator with more than 14 years of experience. The company has created more than 5,000 patent drawings for satisfied clients, and most of these drawings have been for application to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Turnaround Time
A patent application must be filed within one year of the date of the first public disclosure of your invention. A “public disclosure” includes things like a sale or an offer to sell the invention.
You don’t have to physically build your invention in order to secure a patent, but your patent application does need to describe it in sufficient detail that a person “skilled in the art” of your technology would be able to actually build one “without undue experimentation.”
That description usually includes detailed patent drawings.
Because the United States is now a “first to file” country (as of the 2011 “America Invents Act” or AIA), it’s important to file a patent application before someone else beats you to it.
Also, it’s very advisable to have your patent application on file before you discuss potentially licensing your invention to anyone, and before you disclose it to potential investors in your company.
Since timeliness is so important, ask your patent attorney about any upcoming deadlines.
When picking a patent illustration firm, ask when you can expect to have your drawings done. Of course, this will vary depending on the number and complexity of drawings required, but at Invention Patent Drawings we get most drawings done within a week.
Technology Used
In years past, patent drawings were created by hand, using paper and ink. Some are now collected as works of art!
Nowadays, almost all patent drawings are created using computers and CAD (computer-aided design) software.
CAD software not only produces sharp, clear patent illustrations – it’s also efficient. When an invention includes multiple instances of the same parts (such as gears, for example), those can be copied with just the click of a mouse.
Also, CAD software makes it easy to include views of an invention from multiple angles, and from inside and out, including “exploded” views, as shown in the following example.
Thus, make sure the patent drawing firm you pick uses up-to-date computers and software.
Find Out More
To know more about our services and pricing, please send us an email at info@rightpatents.com or call us at +1-917-508-8816.