Patent Drawings in South Africa: 9 Critical CIPC Rules

South Africa does not examine patents for novelty or inventive step. CIPC checks that your paperwork is in order, then grants. That makes the formalities check the only review your figures will ever get from the office — and it makes patent drawings in South Africa unusually consequential, because the set you file is the set a revocation court reads years later, with no examiner-driven clean-up in between. Two short regulations govern the form: Regulation 20 and Regulation 21 of the Patent Regulations, 1978. Most rejected sets fail on the same handful of points.

Patent Drawings in South Africa: What CIPC Actually Checks

Start with the statutory architecture, because it explains everything about how the office behaves. The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) administers the Patents Act 57 of 1978 as a depository registry. Regulation 41 directs the registrar to examine an application accompanied by a complete specification “in order to ensure that it complies with the prescribed formalities” — formalities, and nothing more. There is no search, no novelty objection, no inventive-step argument to win.

For a provisional specification the review is lighter still. Regulation 40 requires only that the documents lodged be legible and capable of reproduction. So the entire official scrutiny of your figures reduces to two questions: can CIPC reproduce them, and do they comply with Regulations 20 and 21?

The consequences of failing are real but recoverable. Regulation 42 gives you three months to remedy any defect raised under Regulation 40 or 41, extendible on request at the registrar’s discretion. Miss that, and Regulation 43 allows the application to be treated as abandoned. An abandoned application is not a formal objection you can argue about — it is a lost filing date.

If you are building a South African filing from scratch, our guide to how to file a patent in South Africa covers the surrounding forms and timetable.

Regulation 20: A4 Sheets and Two Spaces You Must Leave Blank

Regulation 20 requires drawings to be on sheets of A4 size, with minimum margins the same as those in Regulation 15. Those minimums are:

• Top: 20 mm
• Left side: 25 mm
• Right side: 15 mm
• Bottom: 10 mm

Then come the two requirements that catch imported drawing sets. First, below the top margin there must be a space clear of any drawing matter, left free for the name of the applicant, the application number and the numbering of the sheets. Note the geometry: this is a band below the 20 mm margin, not inside it. Your figures have to start lower than the margin alone would suggest.

Second, at the bottom right-hand corner there must be a space within the margin, not occupied by drawing matter, for the signature of the applicant or the applicant’s agent. Very few jurisdictions still ask for a signature on the face of a drawing sheet. South Africa does, and a full-bleed figure that runs into that corner leaves nowhere to put it.

Regulation 20 closes with a short but enforceable sentence: all reference signs appearing on the drawing shall be simple and clear. Dense numeral clusters, leader lines crossing each other, and six-character alphanumeric labels all invite an objection. Our note on patent drawing reference numerals sets out a numbering scheme that survives this kind of review.

One easing worth knowing: Regulation 14 requires each sheet to be used with its short sides at the top and bottom, “except where inappropriate in the case of drawings.” Landscape figures are therefore permitted where the subject genuinely needs them.

Regulation 21: Black Lines, No Colouring, No Exceptions

Regulation 21 governs the medium and the line work. Drawings must be on strong, pliable, smooth, matt and durable drawing paper, or on tracing cloth of the same description, or in such electronic form as the registrar authorises for electronic services. They must be “executed without colouring in durable, black, sufficiently dense and dark, uniformly thick and well defined lines and strokes to permit of satisfactory reproduction.”

Read that phrase closely. “Without colouring” is unqualified. There is no petition procedure, no fee, no “colour is necessary to disclose the invention” carve-out. If your invention is a colour-coded wiring harness or a stained histology slide, you convert to black-and-white line work with hatching, stippling or legends, and you describe the colour in the specification instead.

Two supporting rules travel with it. Regulation 13 requires all documents to permit direct reproduction in an unlimited number of copies, with only one side of a sheet used. Regulation 19 requires drawings to be reasonably free from erasures, alterations, overwritings and interlineations, and legible in any event. Scanned pencil sketches with visible corrections fail both.

There is also a quiet trap in Regulation 18: if a formula or symbol is used in the specification, the registrar may direct that a copy of it be filed prepared in the same manner as drawings. A chemical structure or long equation can therefore be pulled into the drawing standard on request.

Why a PCT-Compliant Set Almost Works Here

Compare Regulation 21 with PCT Rule 11.13(a): “Drawings shall be executed in durable, black, sufficiently dense and dark, uniformly thick and well-defined, lines and strokes without colorings.” The wording is near-identical. South Africa’s line-work standard was lifted from the PCT, which is good news — a set prepared to PCT drawing requirements already satisfies the hardest part of Regulation 21.

The sheet geometry lines up too. PCT Rule 11.5 fixes sheet size at A4 (29.7 cm × 21 cm), and Rule 11.6 sets minimum margins on drawing sheets of 2.5 cm top, 2.5 cm left, 1.5 cm right and 1 cm bottom. Those exceed or equal every South African minimum, including the 20 mm top. The same is true of a United States set: 37 CFR 1.84(f) permits A4 or 21.6 cm × 27.9 cm sheets, and 37 CFR 1.84(g) requires a top margin of at least 2.5 cm, a left margin of at least 2.5 cm, a right margin of at least 1.5 cm and a bottom margin of at least 1.0 cm.

So where does an imported set fail? In three specific places:

1. The identification band. 37 CFR 1.84(c) says identifying indicia, if provided, must be placed on the front of each sheet within the top margin. Regulation 20 wants a clear space below the top margin for the applicant’s name, application number and sheet numbering. A US sheet that uses the margin itself and starts figures immediately beneath it has no band left.
2. The signature space. Nothing in 37 CFR 1.84 or PCT Rule 11 reserves the bottom right-hand corner. Drawing software that centres and maximises each figure will routinely occupy it.
3. Frames and target points. 37 CFR 1.84(g) directs that sheets not contain frames around the sight and should carry scan target points on two catercorner margin corners. South Africa has no equivalent rule, so target crosses are simply stray drawing matter — keep them out of the reserved spaces.

If you work across both offices regularly, our side-by-side on USPTO vs EPO patent drawings maps the same kind of divergence between the two largest systems.

Colour: South Africa Said No While Europe Said Yes

This is the single biggest source of error for firms filing a European-origin set into South Africa, because Europe moved and South Africa did not.

Rule 46 EPC — the old “form of the drawings” provision — was deleted with effect from 1 February 2023, together with Rule 49(3) to (12) EPC, under the Administrative Council’s digital-transformation package. The presentation requirements moved into a Decision of the President of the EPO published in the Official Journal, which is precisely what let the EPO change practice without amending the Implementing Regulations. If a checklist you are working from still cites Rule 46 EPC as live law, it is out of date by three years.

The EPO then used that freedom: from 1 October 2025, drawings filed electronically are accepted in colour or greyscale, provided they are contrast-rich and clear at 300 dpi (OJ EPO 2025, A49 and A57). Description, claims and abstract remain black and white. We covered the mechanics in EPO colour patent drawings.

Nothing comparable happened in Pretoria, and nothing happened at WIPO either — PCT Rule 11.13(a) still says “without colorings.” The United States sits in between: under 37 CFR 1.84(a)(1) ink drawings are the norm, and colour in a utility application is accepted only if the Office grants a petition under 37 CFR 1.84(a)(2) with the fee set by 37 CFR 1.17(h), plus one set of colour drawings when filed through the patent electronic filing system or three sets if not.

Design applications are treated differently. 37 CFR 1.152 requires the design to be shown in a drawing complying with 37 CFR 1.84 and containing a sufficient number of views to constitute a complete disclosure, and colour is permitted there without any petition at all.

Practical rule for a South African filing: build the black-and-white set first and treat colour as the exception you grant yourself only for Europe. Converting colour to compliant line work after the fact is where new matter and inconsistency creep in.

Provisional vs Complete: Where the Standard Relaxes

South Africa runs a provisional-then-complete sequence, and the drawing standard is not the same on both sides of it.

Regulation 32 deals only with drawings accompanying a provisional specification, and it asks for one thing: they must be capable of reproduction by photocopy or reprography. That is a markedly lower bar than Regulations 20 and 21. A clean, legible, scalable sketch will do at the provisional stage.

Regulation 22(1)(f) then requires drawings to be lodged “in the prescribed manner, if drawings are necessary to exemplify the invention.” The conditional matters: there is no blanket obligation to file figures, only an obligation to file them where they are needed to exemplify what you claim. In practice, for anything mechanical, electrical or structural, they are needed. The same regulation sets the copy counts — a single copy of a provisional specification on Form P6, or two copies of a complete specification on Form P7.

Do not let the provisional concession become a habit. Whatever you file provisionally defines the disclosure you can rely on, and a sketch that cannot carry a claim limitation will not acquire that ability when you file the complete specification. Regulation 31 is a useful tell on how seriously the office treats figures: the abstract on Form P8 is limited to roughly 150 words, and features mentioned in it and illustrated in the chosen drawing may be followed by that drawing’s reference sign.

The National-Phase Trap: Text on the Drawings

Most South African patents arrive through the PCT, and there is a drawing-specific requirement in the national-phase rules that is easy to miss.

Regulations 67C and 67D set the national-phase time limit at 31 months from the priority date under both Chapter I (Article 22) and Chapter II (Article 39) of the PCT, with the registrar holding a discretion to extend by a further three months. More interestingly, both regulations specify what the translation must contain: the description, the claims as amended, and — expressly — any textual matter on the drawings.

That cuts against a natural assumption. Regulation 12 exempts drawings from the rule that documents be in an official language of the Republic, so the figures themselves need no translation. The words printed on them do. Every “INLET”, “Schritt 3” or “温度センサ” inside a figure becomes a translation line item, a cost, and a place where the drawing and the translated description can drift apart.

The fix is upstream, at the drafting stage: carry the meaning in reference numerals and explain them in the description, rather than lettering the figures. A flow chart is the usual offender, since box labels are textual matter by definition. Our walkthrough of the PCT national phase in South Africa covers the rest of the entry requirements.

Your Drawings Are Evidence in a Revocation Action

Because CIPC never tests validity, the first genuine examination of a South African patent happens in court. Infringement and revocation are heard together before the Court of the Commissioner of Patents, which sits in Pretoria and is staffed by a judge of the Gauteng Division of the High Court. Appeals run to the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Section 61 of the Act sets out a closed list of revocation grounds, and several of them turn on what the specification — including the figures — actually discloses: that the invention is not patentable, that the specification does not sufficiently describe and ascertain the invention, or that the claims are not clear or not fairly based on the matter disclosed. A figure that contradicts the description, omits a claimed feature, or labels the same element with two numerals becomes a gift to the other side. South African courts construe claims purposively, so the drawings feed directly into how the claim is read.

Term is 20 years from the filing date, with annuities from the third year, and remedies under section 65 include an interdict, delivery up and damages or a reasonable royalty at the patentee’s election. For how those proceedings actually unfold, see patent litigation in South Africa. If you need the figures themselves prepared locally, we publish patent drawing services in Pretoria, the city where both CIPC and the Commissioner of Patents sit.

The strategic point is simple. In an examining jurisdiction, a weak drawing set usually gets corrected by an examiner’s objection long before trial. In a non-examining one, nobody corrects it. It sits on the register, unchallenged and uncorrected, until the day it matters most.

9 Checks Before You Lodge With CIPC

Run this list against the set in front of you. It is drawn directly from the regulations above, in the order the registrar is likely to notice a problem.

1. A4, one side only. Regulations 13, 14 and 20. Landscape is allowed for drawings where portrait is inappropriate.
2. Margins at or above 20 / 25 / 15 / 10 mm (top / left / right / bottom), completely blank — Regulations 15 and 20.
3. A clear band below the top margin for applicant name, application number and sheet numbering.
4. A clear space in the bottom right-hand corner, inside the margin, for the signature of the applicant or agent.
5. No colour anywhere. Black, dense, uniformly thick, well-defined lines — Regulation 21. Convert colour information to hatching, stippling or legends.
6. Reference signs simple and clear, consistent between the figures and the description, with no duplicate numerals.
7. No erasures, overwritings or interlineations; everything legible and reproducible at scale — Regulations 13 and 19.
8. In-figure text minimised, because anything textual on the drawings must be translated on national-phase entry — Regulations 67C and 67D.
9. A diarised three-month clock for any formalities objection under Regulation 42, before Regulation 43 lets the application be treated as abandoned.

Two of these — the identification band and the signature space — are the ones that an otherwise perfect US, European or PCT set will fail. Check them first. For the broader pre-filing sweep we use across jurisdictions, see our patent drawing compliance checklist, and for a neighbouring non-EPC common-law system, patent drawings in Canada.

This article is general information, not legal advice; consult a qualified attorney for your situation.

How PerspireIP Can Help

Our draughting team prepares filing-ready figures to Regulations 20 and 21 for CIPC, and to 37 CFR 1.84, PCT Rule 11 and current EPO practice for everywhere else — including the reserved identification band and signature space that imported sets almost always miss. We also convert colour-dependent European sets into compliant South African line work without introducing new matter.

See our patent drawing services, browse the South Africa practice pages, or contact us with a draft set and we will tell you what CIPC would object to.

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