Patent Drawing in Basel.

Basel is the densest pharmaceutical cluster on earth and it has no patent office and no patent court. The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) sits in Bern, the Federal Patent Court sits in St. Gallen, and the European Patent Office that most Basel families actually rely on sits in Munich. A patent drawing Basel filing therefore answers to a Swiss ordinance, a European rulebook and a PCT standard at once — and from 1 January 2027 it answers to a Swiss examination system that does not yet exist. Here is what that means for the figures.

Where a patent drawing Basel applicant actually files

There is no cantonal patent registry in Basel-Stadt. Swiss national applications go to the IPI in Bern, and the practical question for a Basel filer is not where but when the drawings are due. The IPI splits the filing package in two.

To secure a filing date you need only a request for the grant of a Swiss patent, a description of the invention and the name of the applicant, together with an address for service in Switzerland or Liechtenstein. Claims, abstract and drawings are not filing-date requirements.

Within three months of filing, the rest must follow: at least one patent claim defining the invention, an abstract, and — in the IPI’s own words — technical drawings of reproducible quality. That three-month window is the single most useful fact about a patent drawing Basel timetable. It is a genuine grace period for the figures, not an invitation to file them late and unchecked.

• Filing date — request, description, applicant name, address for service in CH or LI
• Within three months — at least one claim, the abstract, and technical drawings of reproducible quality
• Language — the official Swiss language chosen at filing fixes the language of the procedure; documents filed in English need a translation into German, French or Italian
• Filing route — paper or electronic submission, with electronic receipt confirming the filing date

What the IPI actually requires of the drawings

Switzerland has no equivalent of the long formatting schedule in 37 CFR 1.84. The IPI’s published requirement is short enough to quote: “Technical drawings must be black and white line drawings. It must also be possible to copy or reproduce them.” Everything else follows from those two sentences and from the Patent Ordinance (PatV).

The IPI then says something more interesting about content. The purpose of the technical drawings, it explains, is to illustrate how the features of the invention interact based on examples of carrying out the invention — which is why unessential details should be left out. And on labelling: reference signs in the technical drawing create the context for the description.

Read together, those are instructions about disclosure rather than about draughtsmanship. A patent drawing Basel set is judged on whether it reproduces cleanly and whether it explains the interaction the claims rely on. Clutter is treated as a defect, not as thoroughness.

• Black-and-white line work only — no colour, and no reliance on tonal fills that collapse when scanned
• Reproducible quality — the sheets must survive copying and electronic capture without losing detail
• Selective content — unessential detail omitted, interaction of features shown
• Reference signs tied to the description — the figures and the text must read as one document
• An abstract figure — where the documentation contains drawings that characterise the invention, one is designated for the abstract, with its key reference signs carried into the abstract text in brackets

Why the 2027 reform changes what a patent drawing Basel file must carry

Today the Swiss patent is a partially examined right. Under Article 59(4) of the Patents Act, the IPI examines an application for compliance with the formal and various substantive requirements but does not examine novelty or inventive step. A Swiss patent can therefore grant without anyone at the office having asked whether the invention is new.

That is about to change. The Federal Council has set 1 January 2027 for entry into force of the revised Patents Act. From that date the IPI will carry out a mandatory, fee-based prior art search on every application and summarise the key findings in an official opinion. Applicants who want more can request a full examination of all patentability requirements, including novelty and inventive step, for an additional CHF 300. The cheap partially examined Swiss patent survives alongside it.

For figures, this is a quiet but real shift. In an unexamined system the drawings mostly serve the reader. In a searched-and-opined system they become the place a distinguishing feature has to be visible, because that is what an applicant argues from when the official opinion cites art. A patent drawing Basel set prepared for 2027 should show the structural or process detail that separates the invention from the field, not merely a representative embodiment.

The same logic already applies on the European leg, where the figures have always had to support amendments against cited art. Basel filers who run parallel CH and EP families will simply find the two routes converging.

Where a Basel patent dispute is heard, and why it is never the UPC

A dispute over a Basel company’s patent is not heard in Basel. Since 2012 the Swiss Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht), seated in St. Gallen, has exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over patent validity and infringement for the whole of Switzerland. The commercial courts of Basel-Stadt do not hear them. Appeals go to the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne.

Switzerland is a member of the European Patent Convention but it is not in the European Union. It is therefore outside the Unified Patent Court and outside the unitary patent. A unitary patent never covers Switzerland; the Swiss leg of a European patent is a national right enforced in St. Gallen. Any checklist that routes Swiss enforcement to a UPC division is wrong, and it is a common error in portfolios managed from EU capitals.

This matters for drawings because the Federal Patent Court is a specialist bench with technically qualified judges. Figures are read closely, and by people who can read them. Our note on patent litigation in Switzerland covers the procedure in more detail.

The court has also been active in the pharmaceutical cases that define the local market, deciding matters of significant economic weight for originator and generic parties alike. For a patent drawing Basel client, the audience for the figures is ultimately that bench.

What Basel actually files: pharma, life sciences and chemistry

Basel’s filing profile is unlike Zurich’s or Geneva’s. Roche and Novartis are headquartered here, with a dense ring of contract manufacturers, diagnostics firms, fine-chemicals houses and biotech spin-outs along the Rhine. The figures those filings need are not machine assemblies.

• Chemical structural formulae and Markush structures — set as drawings, with substituent definitions legible after reduction
• X-ray powder diffractograms and thermal traces for polymorphs, salts and co-crystals, where peak positions carry the claim
• Graphs and dose–response curves with axis titles, units and legends that must survive black-and-white reproduction
• Process and dosage-regimen flowcharts for second-medical-use and formulation cases
• Micrographs, gels and assay images, which are the hardest category to convert from colour without losing the point
• Device figures for autoinjectors, inhalers and diagnostic cartridges, where Basel’s filings look conventionally mechanical

The black-and-white rule bites hardest precisely here. A stained histology image or a multi-channel fluorescence panel is meaningless in greyscale if the distinction being claimed is the colour. The answer is not to file the colour version and hope; it is to redraw the figure so the distinction survives as hatching, stippling or labelled arrows, and to carry the colour into the description where it can do legal work.

Supplementary protection certificates extend the basic patent for an active ingredient by up to five years in Switzerland, so a Basel family often stays commercially live for two decades. Figures drawn to survive that long are worth the extra pass.

One family, three drawing standards: IPI, EPO and the PCT

Almost no Basel invention is filed only in Switzerland. The same figure set typically has to clear the IPI, the EPO and the International Bureau, and since 2025 those three no longer agree about colour.

The EPO began accepting colour drawings on 1 October 2025 — a genuine reform, covered in our note on EPO colour patent drawings. The IPI still requires black-and-white line drawings. The result is that a colour-native figure set can now be filed as-is in Munich and must be converted for Bern.

A second piece of European housekeeping trips up older checklists. Rule 46 EPC, which used to carry the EPO’s drawing standards, was deleted with effect from 1 February 2023; its content now sits in Rule 49(3) to (12) EPC. If a Basel portfolio checklist still cites Rule 46, it is out of date.

Our practical approach to a patent drawing Basel family is to draw once to the strictest common denominator — black-and-white line work that reproduces cleanly — and then release a colour variant only where a designated office both permits it and benefits from it. That keeps one master set instead of three divergent ones.

How PerspireIP prepares a patent drawing Basel filers can rely on

We work from whatever exists: CAD exports, ChemDraw structures, instrument output, micrographs, photographs or a marked-up sketch. The deliverable is a sheet set that files at the IPI without a formalities objection and travels to the EPO and the PCT without redrawing.

1. Scope call — we confirm the filing route (Swiss national, European, PCT, or all three) and the three-month Swiss deadline for the figures
2. Disclosure review — we check that the interaction the claims depend on is actually visible, in line with what the IPI asks the drawings to do
3. Conversion — colour and greyscale source material is redrawn as black-and-white line work that keeps the distinguishing detail
4. Reference-sign reconciliation — every sign in the figures is matched against the description before translation into the language of the procedure
5. Reduction test — sheets are checked at reduced scale so lettering and peak labels stay legible after scanning
6. Release — a master black-and-white set, plus an EPO colour variant where it helps

Basel clients most often come to us with a European family already in flight and a Swiss national filing that needs its figures inside three months. That is a straightforward brief, and the patent drawing Basel work is usually finished well inside the window.

We also support the rest of the Swiss IP cycle from the same file, including patent invalidation in Basel and patent drawings in Zurich.

IP Landscape & Resources in Basel

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Basel:

• Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) — the Bern-based office that receives and examines Swiss national patent applications, publishes the technical-drawing requirements, and from 2027 will run a mandatory prior art search
• IPI – The technical drawings — the IPI's own statement that technical drawings must be black and white line drawings, must be reproducible, should omit unessential details, and use reference signs that tie the figures to the description
• IPI – Patent law 2027 — the revised Patents Act entering into force on 1 January 2027, introducing a mandatory prior art search with an official opinion and an optional full examination of novelty and inventive step
• Swiss Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht) — seated in St. Gallen and holding exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over patent validity and infringement for all of Switzerland, with appeals to the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne
• European Patent Office — the route most Basel families rely on; source of the 1 October 2025 colour drawing reform and of Rule 49 EPC, which replaced the deleted Rule 46 EPC

Request Patent Drawings for a Swiss or European Filing

Explore related PerspireIP services: Patent Drawing services · IP services in Switzerland · patent drawings in Zurich · patent invalidation in Basel · patent litigation in Switzerland · EPO colour patent drawings.

Frequently Asked Questions