Patent Drawings in Austria: 7 Critical Rules the ÖPA Applies

Most jurisdictions are drifting toward colour. The EPO started accepting colour and greyscale drawings filed electronically on 1 October 2025. Austria did not follow, and the Austrian Patent Office says so bluntly in its own applicant leaflet, exclamation mark included: Farbtönungen, Fotos etc. sind unzulässig! That single line is why patent drawings in Austria catch out filers who assume a European filing programme can share one figure set. A sheet that is perfectly acceptable at the EPO in Munich can be inadmissible at the ÖPA in Vienna. Below are the seven rules that decide whether an Austrian figure set is filable, and the two routes where they stop applying.

Why Patent Drawings in Austria Diverge From the EPO

Austria is an EPC contracting state and a UPC participant, so it is easy to assume the EPO’s formalities travel with the right. They do not. The EPO’s presentation requirements govern a European application; a direct Austrian national filing is governed by Austrian law, and the two have now visibly parted company on colour.

On the EPO side, Rule 46 EPC — the old “Form of the drawings” provision — was deleted with effect from 1 February 2023, and the presentation rules moved into a Decision of the President of the EPO so they can be changed without amending the Implementing Regulations.

The EPO used that flexibility. Under Article 1(2)(a) of the Decision published at OJ EPO 2025, A49, drawings filed by means of electronic communication “may also be executed in colour or in greyscale, in durable, uniformly thick and well-defined lines, strokes or areas.” It entered into force on 1 October 2025 and applies to drawings only — the description, claims and abstract stay monochrome.

Austria made no corresponding change. The instrument for a national filing is § 15 of the Patentverordnung (PAV), and the Austrian Patent Office restates its practical effect in leaflet PA/GM 144 (Erstinformation für Anmelder:innen zu Patenten und Gebrauchsmustern, version 4.0, Stand 08.07.2026). That leaflet is the document to work from, because it states the office’s own expectations in plain terms rather than leaving them to inference.

The consequence is narrow but real. If your filing programme runs a European application and an Austrian national or utility-model application side by side, the European set may be in colour and the Austrian set may not. One of the two has to be redrawn, and it is cheaper to decide that before filing than after a formalities objection.

Rule 1: Black and White Only — Colour Tints and Photographs Are Inadmissible

This is the rule that matters most and the one most often broken. PA/GM 144 requires that drawings “sind in Schwarz-Weiß … auszuführen” — executed in black and white — and then closes the subject off: “Farbtönungen, Fotos etc. sind unzulässig!” Colour tints, photographs and the like are inadmissible.

Note how wide that is. It is not only saturated colour that fails. A Farbtönung is a tint or shade, which takes out the grey-wash renders that CAD packages export by default, and the soft gradient fills that make a product illustration look finished. And the ban on photographs is unconditional — there is no “only practicable medium” escape hatch of the kind 37 CFR 1.84(b)(1) gives US applicants for black-and-white photographs.

That bites hardest on the case types where an image is the evidence: micrographs in a materials case, histology or gel images in a life-science case, screen captures in a software case. None of those can be a numbered figure in an Austrian national filing. The working method is the same one we apply across the cluster — draw the structure as a line figure that discloses it independently, and let the image live in the description or in the jurisdictions that accept it. Our notes on photographs in patent applications and on color patent drawings work through where each is permitted.

If you want the contrast in one place, our guide to EPO color patent drawings covers what the EPO now accepts. Austria is the counter-example to it.

Rule 2: The Margins Are Not Germany’s, and Not the USPTO’s

PA/GM 144 requires “ein mindestens 2 cm breiter Rand oben, unten und rechts und ein mindestens 2,5 cm breiter Rand links” — a margin of at least 2 cm at the top, bottom and right, and at least 2.5 cm at the left, on A4 portrait (210 × 297 mm), printed one side only.

Set that against the two profiles most filers already have on file:

• USPTO, 37 CFR 1.84(g) — at least 2.5 cm top, 2.5 cm left, 1.5 cm right, 1.0 cm bottom. A US-compliant sheet is therefore short of the Austrian minimum on the right and at the bottom, by 0.5 cm and 1.0 cm respectively.
• Germany, DPMA — 2.5 cm top, 2.5 cm left, 1.5 cm right, 1.0 cm bottom, plus a usable-area cap. Same two shortfalls against Austria, and Austria imposes no equivalent usable-area cap.
• Austria — 2.0 / 2.0 / 2.0 top, bottom and right, 2.5 cm left.

The practical point is that neither of the common profiles is a superset of the Austrian one. People reasonably assume the USPTO is always the strictest and that clearing it clears everything; here it does not. If Austria is in the programme, build the master to 2.5 cm left and 2.0 cm on the other three edges, which clears the USPTO, the DPMA and the ÖPA at once. Our guide to USPTO drawing margins sets out the American figures, and patent drawings in Germany covers the German annex that Austrian practice is most often confused with.

Rule 3: Line Weight Is Tested at 300 dpi, Not by Character Height

Most offices fix a number you can measure with a ruler. 37 CFR 1.84(p)(3) sets a 0.32 cm minimum character height; Germany pairs a 0.32 cm floor with a two-thirds reduction test; the UK’s Schedule 2 asks whether the sheet survives linear reduction to two-thirds.

Austria asks a reproduction question instead. The leaflet calls for “deutlichen Linien … die dick genug sind, um bei einer Auflösung von 300 dpi gut dargestellt zu werden” — clear lines, thick enough to be well represented at a resolution of 300 dpi. There is no millimetre floor to point at and no stated reduction ratio.

That is more forgiving in principle and harder to argue about in practice, because it is a judgement rather than a measurement. The way to make it a test you can actually pass is to render the sheet to a 300 dpi raster and look at it: hairline weights, 0.5 pt strokes inherited from a CAD viewport, and dense cross-hatching are the three things that reliably turn to mush. Anything that survives that render at full size will also survive the two-thirds tests elsewhere, which is why we run it as the default check on every European set.

Rule 4: Sections Are Shown by Hatching

“Schnitte in Zeichnungen sind durch Schraffieren kenntlich zu machen” — sections in drawings are to be made recognisable by hatching. This is conventional and matches PCT and EPO practice, but it interacts with Rule 1 in a way worth spelling out.

Because colour and tints are unavailable, hatching is doing the whole job of distinguishing materials and cut planes in an Austrian set. Where a US or EPO figure might separate two components by fill colour, the Austrian figure has to separate them by hatch angle and spacing.

That means the hatch has to be coarse enough to read at 300 dpi under Rule 3, and sparse enough not to swallow the reference signs — the leaflet is explicit that hatching must not obscure them. Those two constraints pull against each other, and a figure drawn for colour rarely resolves them on the first pass. Our guide to patent drawing sectional views covers the hatch conventions that survive monochrome reproduction.

Rule 5: Reference Signs Must Be Consistent and Must Match the Description

The leaflet requires that, so far as necessary to understand the description, the various parts of the figures carry consecutive reference signs — made up of digits or letters — that allow a part to be found quickly. Then two consistency obligations follow: “Die gleichen Teile müssen in allen Figuren die gleichen Bezugszeichen erhalten und mit den Bezugszeichen in der Beschreibung übereinstimmen.” The same parts must receive the same reference signs in all figures, and must agree with the reference signs in the description.

Note that Austria expressly permits letters as well as digits, which not every office does. The real exposure is the second obligation. Reference-sign drift between the figures and the specification is the single most common formality defect we see in European sets, and it is almost always created after the drawings were approved — a claim is amended, a feature is renamed, a figure is added late, and nobody re-reconciles the numerals. Keeping a reference-sign register alongside the drawing file, and re-running it at each amendment, costs very little and removes the whole class of objection. Our guide to patent drawing reference numerals sets out the register we use.

Rule 6: Figures Are Labelled Fig.1, Fig.2 and Clearly Separated

“Enthalten Zeichnungen mehrere Figuren, sind diese klar voneinander zu trennen und fortlaufend zu nummerieren (Fig.1, Fig.2, …).” Where drawings contain several figures, they must be clearly separated from one another and numbered consecutively, in the Fig.1 / Fig.2 form the office itself uses.

Two things follow. The numbering runs as a single consecutive series across the whole set, independently of how many sheets it occupies — so adding a figure mid-set renumbers everything after it, and the description has to follow. And the separation requirement is a real constraint on sheet layout: crowding four views onto one sheet to save a page tends to fail it, because the eye cannot tell where one figure ends and the next begins without a visible gap.

Austria also expects the description to pick the figures up. PA/GM 144 notes that where figures are provided, they must be referred to in a Figurenzusammenfassung — a figure summary. That is the Austrian equivalent of the brief description of the drawings, and omitting it is a formality defect in its own right; see our guide to the brief description of the drawings.

Rule 7: The Sheets Must Carry the Applicant’s Name or File Number

This is the genuinely unusual one, and the rule most likely to be missing from a set prepared elsewhere. “Die Zeichnungen müssen den Namen des Anmelders oder (falls bekannt) das Aktenzeichen enthalten. Diese Angaben bitte im Seitenrand oder auf der Rückseite anführen.” The drawings must contain the applicant’s name or, if known, the file number — placed in the page margin or on the reverse of the sheet.

Neither the USPTO nor the DPMA requires this. In fact the instinct trained by other offices runs the other way: 37 CFR 1.84 restricts what may appear on a drawing sheet, and most practitioners strip identifying text from figures as a matter of habit. Austria wants it there.

The safe implementation is the margin, not the reverse, for the simple reason that almost all filing is now electronic and a PDF has no reverse. Keep the entry short — applicant name, or the internal case reference once the ÖPA file number is known — set it inside the margin so it does not encroach on the figure area, and keep it off the drawing itself.

Where the Austrian Rules Stop: the Two Routes In

Everything above governs patent drawings in Austria filed nationally — a direct patent application or a Gebrauchsmuster at the ÖPA, including a PCT application entering the Austrian national phase. Two things change the analysis.

The PCT national phase is open, at 30 months. Austria is not one of the EPC states that closed its national route for international applications, so you can enter directly. But the deadline is 30 months from priority under both Article 22 and Article 39 PCT — not the 31 months many filers carry in their heads from Denmark, Norway, Sweden or the EPO itself.

A German translation is required if the documents are not in German, and a registered Austrian representative is needed for a foreign applicant. Mis-docketing this as 31 months is a hard loss, so check it against the ÖPA’s own figure rather than a regional default. Note too that PCT Rule 11.13(a) independently requires drawings in black lines “without colorings,” so the international phase was never a colour route either.

A validated European patent answers to the EPO, not to § 15 PAV. If you reach Austria by validating an EP, the drawings were examined under EPO practice and the Austrian formalities never apply to them — which is exactly how a colour figure set can end up in force in Austria.

Austria never ratified the London Agreement, but German is both an EPO official language and Austria’s, so the outcome splits. An EP granted in German takes effect automatically, with no translation and no validation formality. An EP granted in English or French requires a full German translation filed within three months of the mention of grant — non-extendable, with no grace period.

That translation requirement has a direct drawing consequence. Text left on a sheet falls inside the scope of what must be translated, so every unnecessary word lettered into a figure is a line item on the validation invoice — and a risk of inconsistency between the German and the original. Keep figure text to the indispensable short indications and put the explanation in the description, where it is translated once.

Who Examines, and Who Decides a Dispute

Two features of the Austrian system change how much a defective figure set actually costs you.

First, Austria does examine. The ÖPA conducts full substantive examination for novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, in German, with a 20-year term from filing. So unlike Belgium — where OPRI grants without substantive examination and formality defects travel undetected into the granted patent — an Austrian figure problem is likely to be raised by an examiner during prosecution.

That is inconvenient but recoverable. The Gebrauchsmuster is the exception: it runs to a maximum of 10 years from filing and registers without a full novelty examination, so a utility-model figure set gets much less scrutiny on the way through. Our guide to patent drawings in the Netherlands covers the non-examining end of that spectrum.

Second, the forum is centralised and bifurcated. The Commercial Court of Vienna (Handelsgericht Wien) has exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over patent infringement for the whole country — a Graz dispute between two Graz companies is still a Vienna case — with appeals to the Oberlandesgericht Wien and then the Oberster Gerichtshof. Validity is split off to the Nullity Department of the Austrian Patent Office rather than being decided by the infringement court. Austria has also ratified the UPC and hosts a Vienna local division, so a Unitary Patent or a non-opted-out EP can be litigated there instead.

For drawings specifically, bifurcation raises the stakes on consistency. The infringement court construes the claims against the figures while validity is being tested somewhere else, and a figure that contradicts the description gives each forum a different reading of the same right. That is a bad position to be in by accident.

Pre-Filing Checklist for an Austrian Figure Set

Before patent drawings in Austria go to the ÖPA, we run them against this list. It is short because the Austrian rules are short — the risk is in the assumptions a filer brings from elsewhere, not in the volume of regulation.

1. Strip all colour and all tints. Not just saturated colour — grey washes, gradient fills and shaded CAD renders are Farbtönungen and fail with it.
2. Remove every photograph and micrograph. There is no only-practicable-medium exception. Replace each with a line figure that discloses the structure on its own.
3. Reset the margins to at least 2.5 cm left and 2.0 cm top, bottom and right. A USPTO- or DPMA-compliant sheet is short on the right and at the bottom.
4. Render to 300 dpi and look at it. Hairlines, 0.5 pt CAD strokes and dense hatching are what fail.
5. Re-angle the hatching so it distinguishes the parts that colour used to distinguish, without obscuring any reference sign.
6. Reconcile the reference signs across every figure and against the description — same part, same sign, digits or letters.
7. Renumber as one consecutive Fig.1 / Fig.2 series with visible separation between figures, and check the Figurenzusammenfassung names them all.
8. Add the applicant name or file number in the page margin — the rule other offices do not have.
9. Docket the route deadline as 30 months for a PCT national-phase entry, and three months for a German translation if the EP was granted in English or French.

If you are filing in Vienna or Graz, our local pages set out the same requirements alongside the regional filing base: patent drawing services in Vienna and patent drawing services in Graz. The wider country picture sits on our Austria locations hub.

Need an Austrian-Compliant Figure Set?

Send us your CAD files, renders, micrographs or a draft specification and we will return a figure set built to §15 PAV — monochrome, correctly margined, hatched to read at 300 dpi, reference signs reconciled against the description, and the applicant entry in the margin. We build the matching USPTO, EPO and PCT variants from the same master, so an Austrian filing and a European one do not become two inconsistent disclosures of the same invention. Our patent drawing services page sets out formats and turnaround, or contact us for a fixed quote.

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