Patent Drawing in Zurich.

A patent drawing Zurich applicants file sits in an unusual position in Europe. Switzerland is a founding EPC state but not an EU member, so it is outside the Unified Patent Court entirely, and its national office does not examine for novelty or inventive step. That combination puts more weight on the formal record and on the figures than most Zurich filers expect. PerspireIP prepares figure sets for ETH spin-outs, in-house teams and outside counsel across Zurich and the wider Swiss deep-tech corridor at a flat $25 per sheet, camera-ready in three to five business days. This page sets out the rules that actually apply to a Zurich filing and the drawing problems the local industries generate.

Which rules govern a patent drawing Zurich applicants file

There is no single Swiss drawing standard, because a Zurich portfolio almost never runs down a single route. The applicable rule book depends on where each member of the family is going.

• Swiss national filing – at the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI), in Bern, under the Patents Act (PatG) and the Patents Ordinance (PatV).
• International filing under the PCT – Rule 11 of the Regulations under the PCT governs sheet size, margins, line quality, lettering and reference signs.
• European filing at the EPO – where the presentation requirements now sit in a Decision of the President rather than in the Implementing Regulations.
• US national phase – 37 CFR 1.84, which overlaps with PCT Rule 11 without being identical to it.

PCT Rule 11 is the sensible common denominator. A set built to it clears the IPI and the EPO with little or no rework and needs only light attention before a US national-phase entry. Building to the loosest standard that will be accepted and correcting later is what produces avoidable formalities objections.

The Rule 11 numbers worth committing to memory: A4 sheets, margins of 2.5 cm top, 2.5 cm left, 1.5 cm right and 1.0 cm bottom, a usable surface no larger than 26.2 cm by 17.0 cm, durable black uniformly thick lines without colouring, and numerals at least 0.32 cm high. Every reference sign in a figure must also appear in the description, and the same feature must carry the same sign throughout.

Timing is where the international route punishes a weak set. Under PCT Article 14(1)(a)(v) the receiving Office checks the application against the prescribed physical requirements and, where it finds a defect, Article 14(1)(b) requires it to invite correction. Rule 26.2 allows two months from that invitation; an application not corrected in time is considered withdrawn. Rule 26.3 softens this by limiting the check to what is necessary for reasonably uniform international publication, so minor margin deviations usually pass. Grey, anti-aliased or low-contrast line work does not, and that is the defect Zurich applicants hit most often, because it arrives with the export settings rather than with the drawing.

The IPI does not examine novelty – and that changes what the figures do

This is the single fact that most distinguishes a Swiss national filing from a German or a British one, and it is regularly misunderstood by first-time filers in Zurich.

Under Article 59(4) of the Swiss Patents Act, the Institute does not examine whether the invention is new or whether it involves an inventive step. The IPI does examine the application – patentable subject matter, the statutory exclusions, unity, sufficiency of disclosure, clarity and the formal requirements – but the two grounds that decide most European cases are simply not part of Swiss grant procedure.

Two consequences follow for the drawings. The first is immediate: the formal record is one of the few things the office will actually stop you on, so a defective figure set is a live risk to the filing date rather than a background irritation. The second is deferred and more serious. Because novelty is never tested at grant, it is tested later, in litigation, by an opponent reading your figures for ambiguity. Reference numerals that drift between figures, or that appear in a drawing but never in the description, are the raw material of an invalidity or non-infringement argument.

Swiss opposition does not close that gap either. The opposition procedure under Article 59c PatG runs for nine months from publication of the grant but is limited to the exclusions from patentability – it is not a general novelty challenge in the way EPO opposition is. A Swiss patent that has never been examined for novelty and never been opposed on it arrives in court with its disclosure entirely untested.

Applicants who want an early read on prior art can request the IPI’s optional search under Article 59(5) PatG, which produces a search report without affecting grant. It is worth doing before a family is built out, and it is not a substitute for a figure set that can withstand a hostile reading.

Where a Zurich patent dispute is heard – and why it is never the UPC

Zurich produces the filings; St. Gallen hears the disputes. Switzerland concentrates patent jurisdiction more tightly than almost any European country, and it sits outside the Unified Patent Court altogether.

The Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht), seated in St. Gallen and operating since 1 January 2012, has exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over patent validity and infringement across Switzerland. Its bench combines legally qualified judges with technically qualified judges drawn from the relevant field, and most sit part-time alongside practice. Appeals go to the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne. Cantonal courts retain jurisdiction over some contractual and entitlement matters, but a Zurich infringement action is a Federal Patent Court action.

The UPC point is the one to plan around. Switzerland is a member of the European Patent Convention but not of the European Union, and Unified Patent Court membership follows EU membership. A Unitary Patent does not cover Switzerland, and a European patent validated in Switzerland can never be litigated at the UPC – opt-out or not. For a Zurich company covering Europe, the Unitary Patent and a separate Swiss validation are complementary, not alternatives.

There is a territorial bonus that surprises applicants. Under the 1978 patent treaty between Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the two states form a single patent territory: a Swiss patent, and a European patent designating Switzerland, takes effect in Liechtenstein automatically. One designation, two jurisdictions, one figure set.

The drawing consequence of a technical bench is practical rather than formal. Figures prepared for formalities compliance are the figures a technically qualified judge reads years later when construing a claim, and a cross-section that misrepresents how a mechanism actually fits together is far harder to defend in that room than to correct before filing.

EPC formalities have moved, and Rule 46 EPC no longer exists

Most Zurich portfolios reach Europe through the EPO, so any guide still telling a Swiss applicant to build EPO figures to Rule 46 EPC is working from a rule that has been repealed.

As part of the EPO’s digital transformation package, Rule 46 EPC was deleted together with Rule 49(3) to (12) EPC with effect from 1 February 2023, and Rules 49(2), 50, 57(i) and 82(2) EPC were adapted to match. The substance moved into a Decision of the President of the EPO issued under Rule 49(2) EPC, so presentation requirements can be revised as filing technology changes without amending the Implementing Regulations.

Then the substance itself changed. Under the Decision of the President dated 7 July 2025, drawings filed by electronic communication may from 1 October 2025 be executed in colour or greyscale, in durable, uniformly thick and well-defined lines, strokes or areas, provided they are sufficiently rich in contrast and suitable to be displayed clearly at 300 dpi. Drawings filed electronically in colour from that date are published in colour. The concession is confined to the drawings; description, claims and abstract remain black and white.

The trap is the Euro-PCT route, which is how most Swiss families reach Europe. The EPO’s colour allowance did not amend the PCT. Rule 11.13(a) still requires black lines without colouring in the international phase, and the EPO will work from colour on a Euro-PCT case only where colour drawings are available on PATENTSCOPE and the international publication says so. Filing in colour internationally and assuming the EPO will pick it up later is not a reliable plan.

For a mixed Swiss portfolio the safe approach is unchanged: draft line art that carries the full disclosure in black and white, and treat colour as an EPO-specific enhancement rather than the master version.

What Zurich’s industries need from their figures

Zurich’s filing profile is dominated by software-heavy deep tech rather than by heavy industry, and that shapes the drawing work. ETH Zurich and its spin-out ecosystem, the two federal institutes of technology, the banking and insurance sector’s technology arms, and the research labs clustered around the lake produce a recognisable set of problems.

• Machine learning and AI. Claims are method claims, so the figures are flowcharts and system architecture diagrams. Boxes must be sized so text stays at least 0.32 cm high and legible after the two-thirds linear reduction contemplated by PCT Rule 11.13(c). Model diagrams exported from research slides almost never survive that test unmodified.
• Fintech and payments. Sequence and message-flow diagrams carry the claimed ordering. Reference signs must be attached to the entities and messages the claims actually recite, not just to the boxes that look important on a whiteboard.
• Robotics and precision mechatronics. ETH spin-outs file assemblies with real CAD behind them. The models convert well, but exported renders carry gradients and ambient shading that Rule 11.13 does not permit, and exploded views need numbering discipline the exporter will not supply.
• Medtech and imaging. Device, anatomy and image-processing cases need oblique hatching that breaks where a numeral sits rather than a lead line dragged through dense fill, and reconstructed image data has to be redrawn as line art rather than screened.
• Quantum and semiconductor research. Cryogenic assemblies and device stacks are cross-section cases, and the constraint is PCT Rule 11.13(h): hatching must not impede the clear reading of reference signs and lead lines.

Design protection runs on a separate track. Swiss designs are registered at the IPI under the Designs Act, and an EU design registered at the EUIPO does not cover Switzerland, so a Zurich product launch usually needs both. Design figures follow different conventions from utility figures – broken lines to disclaim environment, consistent surface shading to show contour – and the two sets should be produced together rather than adapted from one another.

How PerspireIP delivers patent drawing Zurich work

Send whatever you have. Hand sketches, CAD exports in STEP or DWG, architecture diagrams, photographs of a prototype, or just the draft specification and claims. The figure set is rebuilt as vector line art rather than traced from a raster source, which is what keeps it compliant at any reproduction scale.

1. Send your material and name the filing routes – IPI, PCT, EPO, US, or a combination.
2. A draftsperson builds the set to the strictest applicable standard, normally PCT Rule 11.
3. Reference signs are cross-checked against the description, so every numeral in a figure appears in the text and stays consistent across figures.
4. You receive camera-ready sheets in three to five business days, in PDF and editable vector format.
5. Revisions are included until the figures clear formalities, including redrafting in response to an objection.

Pricing is a flat $25 per drawing sheet, with no separate charge for the reference-sign audit or for revisions. For a Zurich portfolio running Swiss, European and international filings in parallel, one compliant master set feeding every route is materially cheaper than three sets produced to three standards.

If you are working from CAD conversion or an AI figure generator, send the raw output and we will tell you what will clear formalities before it costs you an objection. If a deadline is close, say so when you send the files – priority turnaround is available and matters most on Euro-PCT cases, where a formalities invitation can consume two months you have not budgeted for.

IP Landscape & Resources in Zurich

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Zurich:

• Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) — the Swiss national office, in Bern, which grants without examining novelty
• Swiss Federal Patent Court — exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over Swiss patent validity and infringement
• WIPO – PCT Rule 11 — the physical requirements every international drawing sheet must meet
• European Patent Office — European filings and the current presentation requirements

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