Patent Drawings in France: 9 INPI Rules to Avoid Rejection

A drawing set that sails through the USPTO can still be sent back by INPI. France publishes its own formal requirements, and on three points they are stricter than 37 CFR 1.84: colour is prohibited outright, the margins are expressed as ranges rather than minimums, and an unremedied formal irregularity is a ground for refusing the application, not merely an objection to clear later. Getting patent drawings in France right is therefore a formalities exercise with real consequences. Here are the nine rules that decide whether your figures clear review at the first attempt.

Why Patent Drawings in France Follow Their Own Rulebook

Three instruments do the work. The Code de la propriété intellectuelle (CPI) sets the framework: Article L.613-2 makes the description and the drawings the material used to interpret the claims, so a figure is not decoration, it is construction evidence. The arrêté on filing formalities and Décision n° 2018-156 on electronic filing supply the presentation detail. INPI then consolidates all of it in its published examination guidelines, La délivrance des brevets et des certificats d’utilité.

The practical consequence is that patent drawings in France are not governed by a translation of the European rules. France is an EPC state, so a European patent can take effect there, but a national French application is examined by INPI against INPI’s own presentation rules. Two drawing sets for the same invention — one for Paris, one for Alexandria, Virginia — will differ in more than paper size.

A second structural point catches people out. WIPO’s PCT Applicant’s Guide for France records that the Office “closed the national route”: the only protection available for France through the PCT is a European patent. So your figures reach France by one of exactly two paths — a direct national filing at INPI, or the EPO. Our guide to the PCT national phase in France walks through the second route in detail.

Rule 1 and 2: A4 Sheets and Margin Ranges, Not Minimums

The paper must be white, durable and A4 — 21 × 29.7 cm — and only the front of each sheet is used. So far this matches 37 CFR 1.84(f), which allows A4 or 21.6 × 27.9 cm (8½ × 11 in). The divergence is in the margins, and it is the single most common reason a US set needs rework.

For patent drawings in France, INPI specifies a usable surface bounded by margin ranges: top 2–4 cm, left 2.5–4 cm, right 2–3 cm, bottom 2–3 cm. The USPTO specifies minimums: at least 2.5 cm top, 2.5 cm left, 1.5 cm right and 1.0 cm bottom under 37 CFR 1.84(g). Read those side by side and the trap is obvious.

• A US sheet with a 1.5 cm right margin is compliant in Washington and short of the 2 cm French floor.
• A US sheet with a 1.0 cm bottom margin is half the 2 cm France requires.
• A generous 5 cm left margin satisfies the USPTO minimum but exceeds the French 4 cm ceiling — France has an upper bound, the USPTO does not.
• The USPTO forbids frames around the sight and asks for cross-hair scan targets on two catercorner margin corners; INPI asks for neither.

Sheets are numbered in consecutive Arabic numerals at the top centre, inside the usable surface, as order number over total separated by an oblique stroke — 1/6, 2/6, 3/6. That convention is identical to 37 CFR 1.84(t), which is a small mercy. Figures are arranged vertically on the page. Our breakdown of USPTO drawing margins sets out the American side of the comparison.

Rule 3: Black Lines Only — No Colour, No Wash

INPI’s wording is blunt: drawings must be executed in durable black lines and strokes, in a way that permits reproduction, sans couleur ni lavis — without colour and without wash. Lines are in principle drawn with technical drawing instruments, and the whole set is expected to follow the conventions of industrial drawing. There is no petition, no fee, no exception route. If you need colour, France is not the jurisdiction that will give it to you, and no amount of drafting around the point changes it: patent drawings in France are a monochrome deliverable.

That puts France at one end of a three-way split, and it is worth being precise about the other two, because this is where fabricated “rules” circulate most freely:

• USPTO utility applications: colour is accepted only after the Office grants a petition under 37 CFR 1.84(a)(2), with the fee set by 37 CFR 1.17(h), plus the prescribed specification statement. Design applications are different — 1.84(a)(2) permits colour drawings in design applications with no petition and no fee.
• EPO: drawings filed electronically have been accepted in colour or greyscale since 1 October 2025, under a Decision of the President, provided they are contrast-rich and legible at 300 dpi. Note that Rule 46 EPC — the old “form of the drawings” rule — was deleted with effect from 1 February 2023; anyone still citing it as live law is working from a stale source.
• PCT: unchanged. Rule 11.13(a) still requires black lines “without colorings”, so colour does not travel reliably through an international application.

Sections are shown by regularly spaced hatching, and INPI adds a usability condition: the spacing is chosen to suit the size of the surface being hatched, and the hatching must not impair easy reading of the reference signs and lead lines. Where a figure is a section of another figure, the parent figure should preferably show the cutting plane and the direction of view. For the European position see our comparison of EPO colour patent drawings and the wider USPTO vs EPO patent drawings analysis.

Rule 4: France Accepts Black-and-White Photographs

Here France is the more permissive forum, which surprises people who assume a no-colour rule signals general severity. Under Décision n° 2018-156, black-and-white photographs are accepted as drawings, provided they are reproducible and meet every other drawing requirement set out above.

Compare the alternatives. The USPTO does not ordinarily permit photographs at all: 37 CFR 1.84(b)(1) admits them only where photography is the only practicable medium for illustrating the claimed invention, and photographs must not be combined with ink drawings in the same visual disclosure. Germany’s DPMA goes further still and does not accept photographs. France simply asks that a photograph behave like a drawing — reproducible, black and white, inside the usable surface, carrying legible reference signs.

In practice this matters most for metallurgical microstructures, crystal forms, textiles and food science, where a line drawing genuinely destroys the information. If a photograph is doing real evidential work in your specification, France will take it — one of the few respects in which patent drawings in France are easier to clear than their US counterparts. Our guide to photographs in patent applications covers how to prepare one that survives formal review, and patent drawings in Germany explains the stricter DPMA position.

Rule 5 and 6: Text, Legends and the Screenshot Ban

Drawings contain no text, with the exception of short indications that are indispensable. INPI gives worked examples of what qualifies — eau, vapeur, ouvert, fermé, coupe suivant AB (water, steam, open, closed, section along AB). Beyond those brief indications, words on a figure must be replaced with reference signs, and the legend moved into the description.

There is a sensible carve-out for complex systems. In circuit diagrams, schematic diagrams of installations and diagrams of process steps, keywords identifying functional units — INPI’s own examples are “magnetic core memory” and “velocity integrator” — may be treated as practically indispensable where they are needed for quick, clear interpretation of the diagram. The test is interpretive necessity, not convenience.

Then comes a rule with no counterpart in US or EPO practice, and it is the one software filers most need to know. A French application must not contain screenshots of a computer screen displaying the graphical interface of third-party software protected by copyright. INPI grounds this in the copyright provisions of the CPI — Articles L.112-2 and L.122-1 to L.122-4 — and prescribes the fix: replace the reproduction with a stylised rectangle standing in for the screen.

Two related points complete the picture for software and process inventions, and both shape how patent drawings in France are assembled. Step schemas, diagrams and short program extracts presented as flowcharts are expressly treated as drawings where they are necessary to understand the invention, and must be laid out to occupy as little space as possible while staying legible. Program extracts in the form of code listings, by contrast, may not appear on the drawings at all and must be moved to an annex at the end of the description. See patent drawings for software inventions for how to restructure a US-style figure set accordingly.

Rule 7: Figure Numbering, Reference Signs and the Abstract Figure

One sheet may carry several figures. The figures are numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals starting at 1, independently of the sheet numbering — including in divisional applications, where the temptation to inherit the parent’s numbering is strong and wrong. Where figures drawn across several sheets are intended to form one composite figure, they must be presented so the whole can be assembled without any part of the component figures being hidden.

The reference-sign discipline runs in both directions, and INPI states one half of it in absolute terms:

• Reference signs may be used on the drawings only if they appear in the description.
• Conversely, every reference sign used in the description and in the claims must be found on the drawings — a rule INPI says admits no exception.
• The reference signs for the same elements must be identical throughout the application.
• Numerals, letters and signs must be simple and clear; prime and second notations (6′, 35″) are permitted; and they are preferably all oriented in the direction from which the figure is to be read.
• One narrow relaxation: where the description is amended by deleting whole passages, INPI does not require the systematic removal of every reference sign on the drawings that has become superfluous.

Scale is handled by result rather than by number. The scale and graphic clarity must be such that a reproduction at two-thirds linear reduction still allows every detail to be distinguished — the same two-thirds test as 37 CFR 1.84(k). France and the USPTO also agree that written indications such as grandeur nature (“actual size”) or échelle 1/2 are not permitted, whether on the figures or in the description, because they lose their meaning on reproduction at a different format. A graphic scale bar, however, is acceptable, and elements within one figure must be in proportion to each other unless a difference in proportion is indispensable for clarity.

Finally, if the application contains drawings the applicant must supply the figure to be published with the abstract, and that figure must itself meet all of the presentation standards above. It is a small deliverable that is easy to forget, and it is among the most common avoidable irregularity notices raised against patent drawings in France.

Rule 8: Omitted and Unreferenced Drawings — The Filing-Date Trap

An application must include drawings wherever the description refers to them. If a referenced figure is missing, INPI informs the applicant, and the options are not equivalent. Under Article R.612-9 CPI the applicant may file the missing drawings within two months of the filing or of INPI’s notification — but the filing date is then moved to the date the missing elements are delivered, unless the application claims a priority and the applicant states that the missing parts appear in the earlier application.

That is a priority-destroying outcome dressed up as a formality, and it is the French analogue of the re-dating trap in several other jurisdictions. The alternatives preserve the date at a different cost:

1. Delete the references to the missing drawings — the filing date is maintained, but the disclosure is correspondingly narrower.
2. Request rectification of an obvious material error, which succeeds only if the proposed drawing follows evidently from the first-filed papers (no other rendering having plainly been contemplated) or from documents bearing a certain date as at the filing date.
3. Where no foreign priority is claimed, file a second complete application within twelve months of the earliest date, including the omitted drawings, under the “internal priority” mechanism — the common matter keeps the first application’s date.

The mirror-image problem is a drawing the description never mentions. Under R.612-36 the examiner may invite the applicant to remedy it. If the extra figure is plainly a variant of the invention and the reference was evidently omitted, the examiner can accept a simple citation added to the description by way of rectification. If the figure is manifestly unrelated to the invention, the examiner may propose its deletion and, absent observations or if the observations are not accepted, delete it of the Office’s own motion. Drawings contrary to human dignity, public order or morality are removed on the same basis under R.612-4.

And the stakes attached to patent drawings in France are higher than a mere objection. Where the papers contain presentation irregularities, Article R.612-46 CPI has INPI set a period for regularisation, and failing regularisation within that period the patent application is refused. Separately, where a manifest error in the drawings means the description and drawings together do not permit the search report to be drawn up, the examiner may issue a notification under L.612-12-6° that can itself lead to refusal. Compare amending patent drawings at the USPTO, where an informal set is usually an objection to be cured, not an existential risk.

Rule 9: One Open XML Document, Every Single Time

Since 19 November 2018, a French patent application is filed electronically through INPI’s Portail brevets at procedures.inpi.fr, and the description, claims, title, abstract, drawings and abstract figure must be supplied in Open XML (.docx) format with the prescribed semantic tags. This makes patent drawings in France a genuinely different filing object from the USPTO’s separate PDF drawing sheets.

The amendment mechanics follow from the format, and they catch firms used to replacement sheets. If the drawings are amended during prosecution, the amended drawings together with the description, claims, title, abstract and abstract figure must be refiled as a single Open XML document. The same is true if you amend the description, or merely the title — the whole set goes back in. There is no French equivalent of filing one corrected figure under 37 CFR 1.121(d).

There is one escape hatch, and it comes with a deadline. If the Portal throws an error or alert that prevents conversion to Open XML and the filing is urgent, the applicant may transmit the document as a PDF to secure a filing date — but that filing must then be regularised under R.612-46 by transmitting the identical document in .docx within two months. Docket that two-month date the moment you use the PDF route.

One last practical note: the manual sheet-numbering convention described above is the rule stated for applications filed before 19 November 2018. For current filings the Open XML notice published at procedures.inpi.fr governs figure numbering, and it remains consecutive Arabic numerals from 1. Build your figures to the stricter reading and you satisfy both.

Where French Drawing Disputes Are Actually Decided

Formalities are the entry fee; construction is the real contest, and Article L.613-2 CPI means your figures will be read when the claims are construed. Knowing which bench does the reading changes how you draw.

For national French and classical European patents, the tribunal judiciaire de Paris holds exclusive jurisdiction over infringement and validity, with patent matters assigned to its third chamber; appeals go to the cour d’appel de Paris and then to the Cour de cassation. For Unitary Patents and non-opted-out European patents, the Unified Patent Court applies. Paris hosts both the seat of the UPC’s central division and a local division, and the central division in Paris takes cases in IPC sections B, D, E, G and H. Our guide to patent litigation in France covers the forum choice in full.

Practically, patent drawings in France drawn to the INPI standard — black line, hatched sections, reference signs matching the description without exception — is also the set that reads cleanly to a Paris judge and to a UPC panel working in French, English or German. The discipline that clears formal review is the same discipline that survives cross-examination.

If you are filing into France for the first time, start with how to file a patent in France for the procedural frame, and see our France IP services hub for local coverage. We prepare figure sets from our Paris and Lyon desks, and the comparable Iberian rules are in patent drawings in Spain.

A Pre-Filing Checklist for French Figure Sets

Run this before any set of patent drawings in France leaves your desk. Each line maps to a provision quoted above, not to a style preference.

1. A4, white, durable, front side only; margins inside top 2–4 cm, left 2.5–4 cm, right 2–3 cm, bottom 2–3 cm.
2. Durable black lines and strokes; no colour, no wash; hatching regularly spaced and not obscuring reference signs or lead lines.
3. Any photograph is black and white, reproducible, and meets every other drawing requirement.
4. No text beyond short indispensable indications; words otherwise replaced by reference signs with the legend moved into the description.
5. No reproduction of a third party’s copyright-protected software interface — substitute a stylised rectangle.
6. Program listings moved to an annex at the end of the description; flowcharts kept compact and legible.
7. Figures numbered consecutively from 1 in Arabic numerals, independent of sheet numbers; sheets numbered 1/n at top centre inside the usable surface.
8. Every reference sign in the description and claims appears on the drawings, and the same element carries the same sign throughout.
9. Legible at two-thirds linear reduction; no “actual size” or “scale 1/2” wording anywhere; graphic scale bar if a scale must be shown.
10. Abstract figure designated and compliant; everything delivered in one tagged Open XML (.docx) document.

For the US baseline against which each of these is a deviation, see our complete treatment of 37 CFR 1.84, and for design filings, which run on 37 CFR 1.152 and its “sufficient number of views” requirement, see design patent drawing requirements. Note that French design protection is a separate regime from the patent rules described here, handled through INPI designs, the EUIPO registered Community design or the Hague System — the EPC has no role in designs at all.

File Into France With Figures That Clear the First Review

PerspireIP prepares INPI-ready figure sets from engineering files, CAD, prototypes or a competitor’s published set — black line, correct usable surface, reference signs reconciled against the description and claims, delivered as a tagged Open XML document ready for the Portail brevets. We also prepare the matching USPTO, EPO and PCT variants so one invention does not become four inconsistent disclosures.

See our patent drawing services for scope and turnaround, or contact us with your specification and we will tell you exactly which figures need rework before you file.

Frequently Asked Questions