by Eviatar Aron, Patent Attorney
One of the challenges when filing a design application is ensuring that the drawings used to describe the ornamental features of a design meet the procedural and substantive requirements of the design registration examination process. For someone who has never filed a design application in Israel, this can be a daunting task and without the proper guidance, can lead to an expensive examination and/or rejection of the design application. Several important matters to consider before filing a design application in Israel are:
- As part of the examination, the Examiner will check the drawings both for clarity and for consistency. It is therefore important to submit high resolution drawings such that the ornamental features are clearly discernible, and also to check that the different views are fully consistent with each other. Consistency can be an issue when a portion of the design is disclaimed by the use of broken lines.
- Design drawings have to be filed either as TIFF or JPEG files. The drawings are filed using the online filing system of the Israel Patent Office which can result in a degradation in the quality of the drawings. On the other hand, there is a maximum file size limit for each drawing file, such that a high-resolution drawing has to be rendered at a lower quality to ensure successful uploading. The result of all of this is that the drawings as received by the Examiner may be blurry and choppy, and thus fail to meet the required standards. If this sounds frustrating – it is!
Some solutions to ensure that the drawings maintain a sufficient high quality to ensure examination are:
- The drawings should be prepared by a skilled draftsman familiar with formal requirements.
- When preparing the drawings, consistency and proportionality among the various views of the design must be maintained.
- The drawing files should be prepared at the highest drawing resolution possible, such that even when they are uploaded, resulting in a reduced resolution, clarity will be maintained. Generally, it is recommended to prepare the drawings as JPEG files with a resolution of 1200 DPI (dots per inch) and to send those to us for filing, as per paragraph #4 below.
- Multiple drawings have to be filed in a single file, labeled in English and Hebrew, consistent with formal requirements. On receipt of the drawings, we will normally import them into Microsoft Publisher®, add the necessary text labels, and then convert them into an acceptable format for filing the design drawings, as a TIFF file. The program used for this conversion should be customizable with respect to compression, resolution and color depth to ensure that the TIFF drawings are at the highest quality, while ensuring that the overall file size does not exceed the maximum size limit mentioned above.
Like most things, adequate preparation can prevent unnecessary expense and potential rejection. We therefore encourage designers to consult with us before submitting their initial application, whether this is a local application on which an eventual Israel application will be based, or a Hague registration covering Israel.
