Patent Drawings in Saudi Arabia: 7 Essential Rules

Saudi Arabia has a numbered drawing rule, which already makes it unusual in the Gulf. What catches practitioners out is how short it is. The whole code governing patent drawings in Saudi Arabia is Article 16 of the Implementing Regulations to the Law of Patents, Layout-Designs of Integrated Circuits, Plant Varieties, and Industrial Designs — four paragraphs, no sheet-size table, no margin schedule, no line-weight specification. Filers read the brevity as latitude. It is the opposite: one of those four paragraphs bans something United States practice actively encourages, and a defect left uncorrected does not earn an office action. It voids the application.

Patent Drawings in Saudi Arabia: Which Rules Actually Bind

Three instruments matter, and only three. The Law of Patents, Layout-Designs of Integrated Circuits, Plant Varieties, and Industrial Designs, promulgated by Royal Decree No. M/27 of 29/5/1425H (17 July 2004), is the statute. Its Implementing Regulations carry the procedural detail, including the drawing conditions. And the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property (SAIP), headquartered in Riyadh, applies both. There is no supplementary drawing manual, no examiner’s guide published in the manner of the MPEP, and no equivalent of the EPO Guidelines.

That sparseness changes how you should read the rule. Where 37 CFR 1.84 runs to fifteen lettered paragraphs and tells you the character height in centimetres, the Saudi regulation states a handful of principles and leaves the rest to conventional international formalities. In practice PCT Rule 11 is the sensible working baseline: A4 sheets, clear unmarked margins, durable uniformly thick black lines, figures numbered consecutively. It is also the standard the sheets must already meet if the file arrives through the national phase, so building to it once avoids a redraw.

What you cannot do is assume silence means acceptance. The four paragraphs that do exist are directive, and one of them is a prohibition.

Article 16: The Whole Saudi Drawing Code in Four Paragraphs

Article 16 is headed “Conditions for Drawings”. In full, it requires the following.

1. Article 16(1) — drawings shall be clear and of high quality for duplication.
2. Article 16(2) — a page may contain more than one figure, and where necessary a figure may be put on more than one page, provided the pages can be easily juxtaposed to make one drawing.
3. Article 16(3) — figures are given separate numbers irrespective of the page number; the same numbers or letters identify the same components across the drawings; drawings may not be shaded and shall be presented in bold black lines; and the section is highlighted with broken lines.
4. Article 16(4) — drawings may not contain any words or otherwise for the purpose of description, although words may be used where necessary to explain some of the main features.

Two neighbouring provisions belong with it. Article 11(5) makes drawings compulsory where they are necessary for a complete and clear understanding of the invention, so a figure is not optional merely because the description is long. Article 11(3) pushes the other way: the abstract, full description and claims may not contain drawings, and tables belong in the full description. Saudi practice keeps the visual disclosure in the drawing sheets and nowhere else.

Note what is absent. There is no stated sheet size, no numbered margin dimension, no minimum character height, no provision for colour, and no provision for photographs. Colour and photographs are not expressly permitted, and the safe assumption is that a Saudi set is monochrome line work.

The Shading Prohibition Is the Rule That Fails US-Ready Sets

“Drawings may not be shaded and shall be presented in bold black lines.” That clause in Article 16(3) is the single most consequential sentence in Saudi drawing practice, because it inverts a US drafting habit rather than merely qualifying it.

Under 37 CFR 1.84(m), the use of shading in views is encouraged if it aids in understanding the invention and does not reduce legibility. The rule goes further and tells you what shading is for: indicating the surface or shape of spherical, cylindrical and conical elements, with flat parts lightly shaded, and spaced lines preferred. A properly prepared US utility set is therefore covered in exactly the surface modelling Article 16(3) excludes. Our guide to patent drawing shading requirements sets out what that US convention is trying to achieve, which is the information you have to carry some other way in a Saudi set.

Sectioning is the related trap. 37 CFR 1.84(h)(3) makes hatching mandatory to indicate section portions of an object, by regularly spaced oblique parallel lines preferably at 45 degrees. Article 16(3) describes the Saudi treatment of a section only as highlighting it with broken lines, and says nothing at all about hatching. The cutting-plane convention is common ground, since 1.84(h)(3) also indicates the section plane by a broken line. The surface tone is not.

So the conversion job is narrower than “redraw everything” but real:

• Remove surface shading, and carry contour through line weight and view selection instead of tone
• Keep the section views, indicating the cutting plane with a broken line as Article 16(3) contemplates
• Treat greyscale fills, solid blacks and gradient rendering as unavailable
• Add a view rather than add shading when a form genuinely cannot be read from the existing figures
• Keep the US set as a separate deliverable — the two offices want different sheets, and one merged set serves neither

Article 36: A Ninety-Day Fuse That Voids the Application

This is the part that turns a formality into a live risk, and it is why a Saudi drawing defect should never be treated as something to tidy up later.

Under Article 36, registered applications are examined for the formal conditions in Article 8 of the Law and Chapter 2 of the Regulations — the chapter that contains Article 16. If the formal examination reveals that some conditions are not satisfied, the applicant is requested to satisfy them within a period not exceeding ninety days from the date of notification. Failure to comply within that period renders the application null and void.

Read that against the sequence in Article 37. Formal examination comes first. Publication fees are then payable within three months or the application lapses. The substantive examination expenses are assessed and payable within three months or the application is forfeited, and only on payment does SAIP perform the substantive examination. A drawing problem therefore surfaces at the very first gate, before anybody has assessed novelty, and the consequence of ignoring the notice is not a narrowed claim set but a dead file.

Gulf neighbours run comparable clocks to different effect, which is worth knowing if you handle both. In the Emirates the equivalent ninety-day period operates as a waiver of the deficient element rather than a termination of the application, as our note on patent drawings in the UAE explains. Saudi Arabia is the harsher of the two. Diarise the Article 36 notice the day it arrives.

Drawings also re-enter at the substantive stage. Article 38(A) has the Authority examine the claims, description and drawings to determine the essential components of the invention, so the figures are read as disclosure, not decoration.

Text in a Figure Becomes an Arabic Translation Item at 30 Months

Arabic is the language of the Saudi register. An application may be prepared in Arabic, or filed with a certified English copy with the translation furnished within three months. For the specification that is a translator’s task; for the drawings it is a draughtsman’s task, and the second bill is the one nobody budgets for.

The PCT route states the requirement plainly. WIPO’s national chapter for Saudi Arabia requires the Arabic translation furnished on entry to cover the description, the claims, the abstract and any text matter of the drawings. Entry is due at 30 months from the earliest priority date under PCT Article 22, and at the same 30 months under Article 39(1) — there is no extra month for a demand, unlike several European states. Every label inside a figure is a separately translated, separately proofread element landing on a hard deadline.

Article 16(4) pushes from the other side by excluding descriptive wording from the figures altogether, tolerating words only where they are necessary to explain main features. The two rules converge on one discipline: a numeral-driven figure. It reads identically in the Arabic file, the English priority document and the PCT publication, and it survives a family extension without retranslation. The same logic underpins the broader PCT drawing requirements that your sheets have to satisfy upstream anyway.

• Replace descriptive labels with reference numerals wherever the description can carry the wording
• Deliver layered source files rather than flattened rasters, so surviving lettering can be substituted cleanly
• Audit flowcharts and system diagrams hardest — box text is where in-figure wording hides
• Keep lettering out of the margins in either script

Numbering, Multi-Page Figures and Where the Drawings Must Be Echoed

Article 16(2) and 16(3) between them settle the mechanics. A page may carry several figures. A single figure may be split across pages, but only if those pages can be easily juxtaposed to make one drawing — so a split has to be planned at the drawing stage, with the join falling somewhere the reader can reassemble, not wherever the export happened to break. Figures are numbered separately from the pages, and one component keeps one numeral or letter across every figure in the set.

The regulations then tie the figures into the rest of the document more tightly than most filers expect, and these cross-references are exactly what a formal examination checks.

• Article 13(2) — where there are drawings, the abstract must refer to the figure that depicts the invention, and that figure’s number is given at the end of the abstract
• Article 13(3) — if the abstract names components appearing in that figure, their numbers or letters go in parentheses within the abstract text
• Article 14(3) — the full description must contain a “Brief Explanation of the Drawings” part, under that underlined heading, in fixed sequence after “Background of the Invention” and “General Description of the Invention” and before “Detailed Description”
• Article 15(5) — reference numerals may appear in parentheses in a claim that refers to components shown in a figure

The fixed heading order in Article 14(3) catches US-drafted specifications routinely, because the familiar American arrangement is close but not identical. If you are unsure what that part should contain, the US analogue is covered in our piece on the brief description of the drawings; the Saudi difference is that the heading itself is prescribed and underlined.

One limit is worth noting before the claims are settled. Article 15(3) requires the claims to define the scope of protection so that it can be verified without recourse to the full description or the drawings, except where absolutely necessary. A Saudi claim cannot lean on a figure to supply structure it failed to recite.

Article 11(6): A Content Screen That Reaches the Figures

One Saudi provision has no counterpart in the US or European codes, and it is easy to miss because it sits in the general specification article rather than the drawing article. Article 11(6) provides that the specification may not include statements or drawings contradictory to Islamic Sharia or public morals.

For the overwhelming majority of filings this never arises. It deserves a deliberate look at a narrow band of subject matter: consumer and food products where packaging artwork or product imagery is reproduced in the figures, medical and diagnostic devices illustrated in anatomical context, and anything in the beverage, leisure or gaming space.

The answer is almost always a drawing decision rather than a legal argument. A device figure can show the apparatus and its interface without reproducing incidental imagery, and an anatomical illustration can usually be reduced to the schematic section the claim actually needs. Both are better figures for an examiner regardless. Article 11(7) points the same way by excluding advertising material and statements disparaging competing products or methods, while expressly allowing a straight comparison with prior industrial technology.

Two Routes In, and the One That Closed in January 2021

Saudi Arabia is not a party to the European Patent Convention, so a European patent cannot be validated into the Kingdom. Clients who file in Europe assume the Gulf behaves the same way and it does not. Nor is there a regional Gulf patent any longer: the GCC Patent Office stopped accepting new applications on 6 January 2021, and Saudi applications are examined by SAIP.

That leaves two routes, both ending at the same examiner.

• Direct national filing at SAIP, with Paris Convention priority where a first filing exists elsewhere
• PCT national phase at 30 months — Saudi Arabia has been bound by the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and by the Patent Law Treaty, since 3 August 2013

The national phase route carries three consequences for drawings that are specific to the Regulations. Article 61 makes SAIP a receiving office. Article 63 subjects a national-phase application to the Law and the Implementing Regulations — which is the provision that puts Article 16 in front of figures WIPO has already published. And Article 64 fixes the Saudi filing date as the date the receiving office received the international application, with Article 65 running the annual fee from the international filing date, back years payable when the first fee falls due and doubled if paid late.

Put together, that means the figures the Saudi examiner reads are the figures you filed internationally. Correcting them on entry is possible but constrained: you cannot add matter, and a redrawn figure disclosing more than the published one will not be accepted. Shading has to come off at a point where removing it does not change what the drawing teaches — which is an argument for doing the conversion deliberately, not at the deadline.

If you are filing from inside the Kingdom, our pages on patent drawings in Riyadh and patent drawings in Jeddah cover the local filing profile and the enforcement route in each city, and the Saudi Arabia services hub lists the rest.

Seven Checks Before a Saudi Set Leaves Your Desk

Worked backwards from the Article 36 notice you are trying not to receive:

1. No shading anywhere. Surface tone, greyscale fills and gradient rendering all come off, and the information they carried moves into line weight and extra views.
2. Bold black line work that survives reduction and reproduction, on A4 sheets with clear unmarked margins per PCT Rule 11.
3. Figures numbered independently of the pages, and any figure split across pages planned so the pages juxtapose into one drawing.
4. One numeral per component across the whole set, reconciled against the claims and the description — nothing numbered twice, no orphan numerals in either document.
5. In-figure text reduced to the necessary minimum, held on editable layers, and costed as an Arabic translation item if it stays.
6. Abstract and description cross-references in place: the depicting figure’s number at the end of the abstract, and a “Brief Explanation of the Drawings” heading in the Article 14(3) sequence.
7. An Article 11(6) read-through on consumer, healthcare and packaging subject matter before the file goes out.

None of this is expensive if it happens before filing. All of it is expensive at ninety days’ notice, when the alternative to a compliant redraw is a null application and a refiling that has lost its date.

Need Saudi-Compliant Figures?

PerspireIP prepares formal drawing sets for Saudi national filings and PCT national phase entries at SAIP, including Article 16 conversions of existing USPTO and EPO sets. Send us CAD geometry, a prototype photograph, a rough sketch or a granted US set and we will confirm scope, price and turnaround. See our patent drawing service or contact us with your deadline and we will work back from it.

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