The patent office requires drawings in plain black and white. How can one remove the shading of the titles used in Graph Builder (see Sex and Vehicle below)? The light background shading is easy to remove, but increasing the contrast in Powerpoint to remove the dark shading of the "Sex =" doesn't work well.
Also is there an option tol increase all font sizes by a factor to fulfil the requirement that all characters be .125 in high?
Accepted Solutions
Re Shading, thanks for confirming that there is no option to change the shading of titles. I have used the workaround of increasing brightness and contrast, which works for the lighter of the title shadings (and replaced the main title with text, such as "Sex = Female"). Thanks for pointing to the option of changing the darker shading by setting it to Transparent Color. I understand that one could get away with shades (in the US, but potentially not with the more "picky" PCT), but I don't like taking chances with trying to "slip under the radar".
One more question: I was able to darken the color of the vertical line separating two sub-plots, but couldn't find a way to put a horizontal line on top. Is there an option for that somewhere?
Re font sizes: Note that the USPTO dows not use the word "font size", in its Guide for Preparation of Patent Drawings, 37 CFR 1.4(n), but requires that [all] "Numbers" must measure at least .32 cm (1/8 inch) in height. In terms of font measurement units, the requirement refers to (at least) cap height, not to font size:
(see http://www.thomasphinney.com/2011/03/point-size/ for a discussion).
Of course did I not have the same spacing in my graphic, because I wanted to demonstrate which font has the required cap height of 1/8 in - it is the 12 pt (font size) font. Hence, if one doesnt want to take chances with the PCT, one has to use a font with a cap height of 1/8 in, which is font size 12.To avoid the legal challenges mentioned in the above law suit (rather than the required point size, your point size was only 10.98 pt), 12.5 would probably be a better choice.
I found a workaround by scaling up the graph created by JMP by 40% for patent drawings.
1) I placed text with SEGOE UI characters of various size into a 1 inch tall box:
As you can see, only the 12 pt font fulfils the legal requirement that the characters (especially digits, because the requirements apply to fields displaying numbers, too) have a heigth of 1/8 in. Where you referring to a different Font?
Not everything, of course should be the same height, so if you were to change manually, Title fonts, for instance should be larger than 12 pt. Then, resetting the fonts to the size that suits other purposes better would be a mess, unless there were an option to have different font size settings saved under different names. is there?.
2) Where is the shading of the titles defined, so that you can remove it for the purpose of patent drawings?
Re Shading, thanks for confirming that there is no option to change the shading of titles. I have used the workaround of increasing brightness and contrast, which works for the lighter of the title shadings (and replaced the main title with text, such as "Sex = Female"). Thanks for pointing to the option of changing the darker shading by setting it to Transparent Color. I understand that one could get away with shades (in the US, but potentially not with the more "picky" PCT), but I don't like taking chances with trying to "slip under the radar".
One more question: I was able to darken the color of the vertical line separating two sub-plots, but couldn't find a way to put a horizontal line on top. Is there an option for that somewhere?
Re font sizes: Note that the USPTO dows not use the word "font size", in its Guide for Preparation of Patent Drawings, 37 CFR 1.4(n), but requires that [all] "Numbers" must measure at least .32 cm (1/8 inch) in height. In terms of font measurement units, the requirement refers to (at least) cap height, not to font size:
(see http://www.thomasphinney.com/2011/03/point-size/ for a discussion).
Of course did I not have the same spacing in my graphic, because I wanted to demonstrate which font has the required cap height of 1/8 in - it is the 12 pt (font size) font. Hence, if one doesnt want to take chances with the PCT, one has to use a font with a cap height of 1/8 in, which is font size 12.To avoid the legal challenges mentioned in the above law suit (rather than the required point size, your point size was only 10.98 pt), 12.5 would probably be a better choice.
I found a workaround by scaling up the graph created by JMP by 40% for patent drawings.
It's the same with Arial:
