Patent Drawing in Sophia Antipolis.

A patent drawing Sophia Antipolis engineer commissions is almost never a machine. It is a protocol, a radio architecture, a reservation system or a layer stack — the output of a 2,400-hectare park founded in 1969 that now holds roughly 2,500 companies and some 38,000 employees across Valbonne, Biot and Antibes. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute sits inside it, at 650 Route des Lucioles. So does Inria’s Sophia Antipolis–Méditerranée centre, EURECOM, Amadeus’s main development centre, Orange, Arm, NXP Semiconductors and SAP Labs France. Those filings are block diagrams, message-sequence charts and cross-sections, and the French sheet rules were written with none of them in mind.

Where a patent drawing Sophia Antipolis applicant actually files

There is an INPI presence in the park itself — an office at 175 rue du Vallon, 06560 Valbonne, reachable at pacaest@inpi.fr, under the Délégation régionale Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur headquartered at Espace Gaymard, 2 place d’Arvieux in Marseille, with a monthly permanence in Nice. It is the closest thing to a local patent office that any French technology cluster has.

It is also easy to misread. A regional delegation informs, advises and runs clinics; it does not examine. The Institut national de la propriété industrielle takes French national filings electronically into a single national queue, and a Valbonne application is examined on exactly the same basis as one filed from Courbevoie. Having INPI five minutes away changes who you can ask a question of. It changes nothing about the standard your sheets are held to.

What that standard involves is stricter than it used to be. Since the Loi PACTE, INPI runs a full substantive examination, and inventive step has been an examined patentability requirement for applications filed on or after 22 May 2020. A pre-grant opposition procedure is available against French patents granted from 1 April 2020. French prosecution now behaves far more like EPO prosecution, and the drawings carry correspondingly more weight as the record of what was actually disclosed.

One more national provision applies here as everywhere in France, and dual-use radio work in this park does trip it: under Article L.612-9 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle, INPI submits every patent application to the Ministry of Defence within fifteen days of filing, and authorisation to disclose or freely work the invention is acquired automatically five months after the filing date unless the prohibition is extended.

ETSI is inside the park, and that changes what your figures must prove

No other European technology cluster has a standards body living in it. ETSI is headquartered at 650 Route des Lucioles in Valbonne — Sophia Antipolis, and it provides the support structure for 3GPP. A great deal of the mobile, IoT and cybersecurity work done within a few kilometres of that address is drafted with a standards contribution in one hand and a patent application in the other.

That creates a figure-set problem that does not exist in mechanical art. Under the ETSI IPR Policy, members must use reasonable endeavours to inform ETSI in a timely fashion of IPR that is or may become essential to a standard, and a member declaring essential IPR is asked to give an irrevocable undertaking to license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Those declarations go into ETSI’s public IPR Online Database.

Essentiality is then argued, years later, by mapping the claims onto the published standard. The figures are part of that argument, because they are the only part of the application that shows architecture and sequence at a glance. Three consequences follow for drafting:

• Architecture figures get read as disclosure, not illustration. A block labelled only “processing unit” where the claim recites a specific scheduling function gives the other side an argument about what the application taught.
• Sequence matters as much as structure. If a claim recites an ordered exchange, a figure that shows the entities but not the order leaves the ordering supported by text alone.
• Reference signs survive translation. A declared-essential family is litigated in several languages. Numerals do not need translating; prose annotations on the sheets do.

None of this is a reason to crowd the sheets. It is a reason to decide, before filing, which claimed relationships a figure is carrying — and then to draw those.

Block diagrams and sequence charts under the French sheet rules

French formal requirements for patent application documents sit in a decision of the Director General of INPI — Decision n° 2018-156 of 8 November 2018, as modified — rather than in the Code. For a park whose output is overwhelmingly schematic, four provisions do the work.

Flowcharts, step schemas and block diagrams are drawings for French purposes. They belong on the numbered sheets, not inline in the description, and they are subject to every sheet rule that applies to a gearbox section.

Text on the sheets is confined to what INPI calls courtes indications indispensables — short, indispensable indications. The office’s own examples are single words of the order of eau, vapeur, ouvert, fermé, coupe suivant AB. The practical line is this: functional labels inside the blocks of a circuit, process or message-flow diagram are normal practice and are not caught by the rule, while anything resembling a sentence is an irregularity. A message-sequence chart labelled with entity names and message identifiers is fine. The same chart carrying a clause of explanation beside each arrow is not; that explanation belongs in the description.

Code listings may not appear on the drawings at all. They go in an annex at the end of the description under R.612-13. Pseudocode set in a flowchart box is a recurring finding in software filings out of this park.

Reference-sign reciprocity is absolute. A sign in the drawings must appear in the description and a sign in the description must appear in the drawings, and the same element keeps the same sign throughout. On a forty-block architecture diagram this is the check that fails most often, and it is mechanical enough to automate.

Two sanctions sit behind the formalities and both are worse than an objection. Under R.612-9, drawings referred to but not filed may be supplied within two months — but the filing date moves to the date they arrive, unless priority is claimed and the applicant states the missing parts were in the earlier application. Under R.612-46, a presentation irregularity that is not regularised leads to refusal of the application.

The screenshot prohibition, and why Amadeus-scale software filings hit it

France has a drawing prohibition with no US or EPO counterpart, and it lands directly on this park’s largest employers. Amadeus runs its main development centre here; SAP Labs France, Orange, Fortinet and Accenture are all on site. Their inventions have interfaces.

A French patent drawing may not reproduce a computer screen displaying a third party’s copyright-protected software interface. The basis is copyright rather than patent law — Articles L.112-2 and L.122-1 to L.122-4 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle. The accepted substitute is a stylised rectangle standing in for the display, with the claimed content shown schematically.

The breach is usually accidental. A booking-flow or network-operations invention illustrated with a capture of the real console arrives complete with a vendor’s widget set, window furniture and font rendering — none of it the invention, all of it somebody’s copyright. Redrawing it as a schematic display costs an afternoon before filing and cannot be done cleanly afterwards without a new-matter argument.

Note how this interacts with the courtes indications rule. A stylised interface figure needs enough labelling to identify the claimed elements and no more. Field names and control labels are functional labels and are acceptable; the sample data a screenshot would have carried is neither needed nor wanted.

Semiconductor cross-sections: hatching does the work colour cannot

The silicon side of the park — Arm, NXP Semiconductors, CEVA and the RF and embedded design houses around them — files cross-sections, and cross-sections are where the French colour ban bites hardest.

Decision n° 2018-156 requires black lines and strokes, sans couleur ni lavis — without colour and without wash — and there is no petition route in France. Compare the alternatives the same invention will meet elsewhere: 37 CFR 1.84(a)(2) admits colour in a US utility application on a granted petition with the fee set by 37 CFR 1.17(h), and the EPO has accepted colour and greyscale on electronically filed applications since 1 October 2025. France simply says no.

In a TCAD or layout viewer, layers are told apart by colour. On an INPI sheet they have to be told apart by hatching angle — the same discipline 37 CFR 1.84(h)(3) imposes, which requires hatching at a substantial angle to the surrounding axes, preferably 45°, and differently angled hatching for juxtaposed different elements. An oxide, a nitride and a metal layer each need their own angle, and the hatching spacing has to stay wide enough that reference signs and lead lines remain legible through it.

Two more INPI numbers decide whether the sheet is accepted at all:

• Margins are ranges, not minimums — roughly top 2–4 cm, left 2.5–4 cm, right 2–3 cm, bottom 2–3 cm, on A4 only. A sheet drawn to 37 CFR 1.84(g), which permits a 1.5 cm right and 1.0 cm bottom margin, falls outside the French range. France also imposes an upper bound the USPTO does not.
• Legibility at two-thirds linear reduction. Statements such as grandeur nature or échelle 1/2 are barred; a graphic scale bar is acceptable. A 7 nm feature drawn to a scale that fits the sheet will not survive the reduction, which is why die cross-sections are drawn schematically rather than proportionally.

Black-and-white photographs are accepted in France where reproducible and otherwise compliant — more permissive than 37 CFR 1.84(b)(1), which admits photographs only as the sole practicable medium. That suits a TEM or SEM micrograph of a layer stack, provided it is not mixed with ink drawings on the same sheet.

Where a Sophia Antipolis patent dispute is heard: Paris, and only Paris

Alpes-Maritimes has courts; none of them will hear your patent case. The Tribunal judiciaire de Paris holds exclusive national jurisdiction over French patent matters through its third chamber, with appeal to the cour d’appel de Paris and then the Cour de cassation. An infringement action between two companies on the same road in Valbonne is litigated nearly nine hundred kilometres north.

The Unified Patent Court concentrates things further, and the allocation is unusually relevant here. Paris hosts both a local division and the seat of the central division, and the Paris seat takes central-division cases in IPC sections B, D, E, G and H. Two of those are this park’s entire output:

• Section H covers electricity and electronics, including H04 — electric communication technique. Nearly every declared-essential telecom family out of Sophia Antipolis sits here.
• Section G covers physics and instruments, which is where computing, data processing and sensing subject matter lands.

So a revocation action against a Sophia Antipolis-origin European patent is heard by the Paris seat of the central division, in the same city as the examining office and the national court. In each of those forums the figures are read as disclosure. A reference sign on a sheet with no counterpart in the description, an architecture diagram that contradicts the brief description of the figures, or a layer cross-section whose hatching stops distinguishing two films after reproduction is an argument handed to the other side about what the application actually taught.

What the park files, and what those figures demand

Filing out of Sophia Antipolis concentrates in three overlapping areas, and each makes a specific demand of a figure set.

• Telecommunications and standards work. ETSI and 3GPP support on site, Orange’s research presence, EURECOM and Inria’s Sophia Antipolis–Méditerranée centre. The figures are network architecture diagrams, protocol stacks and message-sequence charts, and they have to carry claimed ordering and entity relationships without prose annotation.
• Semiconductors and embedded systems. Arm, NXP Semiconductors, CEVA and the RF design base. Layer cross-sections, floorplans and signal-path diagrams, differentiated by hatching angle because colour is unavailable at INPI, and drawn schematically because true scale cannot survive two-thirds reduction.
• Enterprise and travel software. Amadeus’s main development centre, SAP Labs France, Fortinet, Accenture and Sopra Steria. Flowcharts and step schemas on the sheets, code listings in an annex under R.612-13, and interfaces drawn as stylised displays rather than captured.

One pattern runs through all three, and it runs the opposite way to most people’s instinct. Telecom and software filers reach for the EPO and the PCT first, and both of those accept things INPI will not — the EPO has taken colour since 1 October 2025, and the USPTO takes it on petition. A colour set built for Europe has to be redrawn to come back down to a French national filing, while a black-line INPI-compliant master converts upward to the EPO, the USPTO and the International Bureau without a redraw. Draw the strictest set first.

It is also worth remembering that PCT Rule 11.13 was not changed when the EPO began accepting colour. The International Bureau still requires lines and strokes without colourings, so a colour figure that is now perfectly filable at the EPO remains non-compliant for an international application.

How PerspireIP prepares a patent drawing Sophia Antipolis filers can rely on

We build the French national set first and derive the rest from it, because that is the only direction the conversion works without redrawing.

• A black-line master built to Decision n° 2018-156 — French margin ranges on A4, no colour and no wash, lettering and reference signs legible at two-thirds reduction, sheet text limited to short indispensable indications.
• Architecture and sequence figures drawn against the claims — every claimed entity, relationship and ordered step traceable to a numbered figure before filing, which is what makes an essentiality mapping survivable years later.
• Reference-sign reconciliation in both directions against the description, so the reciprocity requirement and the brief description of the figures agree with what is on the sheets.
• Interfaces redrawn as stylised displays, with the claimed behaviour shown schematically rather than captured, and pseudocode moved out of flowchart boxes into an R.612-13 annex.
• Semiconductor cross-sections differentiated by hatching angle, spaced to keep reference signs legible, at a substantial angle to the surrounding axes as 37 CFR 1.84(h)(3) also requires.
• EPO, PCT and USPTO variants from the same master — colour or greyscale where the EPO now permits it, Rule 11 compliance for the International Bureau, and a 37 CFR 1.84 set with the petition route flagged only where colour genuinely carries information.

Send architecture sketches, standards contributions, layout or TCAD exports, interface specifications or rough diagrams, and we will come back with scope, price and turnaround for an INPI filing, a European application or a PCT filing.

IP Landscape & Resources in Sophia Antipolis

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Sophia Antipolis:

• Institut national de la propriété industrielle (INPI) — the French office that receives and examines national patent applications, with a Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regional delegation and an office at 175 rue du Vallon in Valbonne, inside the park
• ETSI — the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, headquartered at 650 Route des Lucioles, Valbonne – Sophia Antipolis, and the support structure for 3GPP
• European Patent Office — the route most telecom and software filers in the park use first, and the source of the 1 October 2025 reform admitting colour and greyscale drawings on electronically filed applications
• Unified Patent Court — hosts a local division in Paris and the seat of the central division, which takes central-division cases in IPC sections B, D, E, G and H – including electronics and communications

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