Patent Drawing in Dallas.

Every patent drawing Dallas engineers commission is measured against one federal rule, 37 CFR 1.84, and then against whichever foreign office the family travels to next. What makes North Texas unusual is that the city hosts a USPTO office of its own, sits beside the busiest patent-litigation venue in the country, and generates filings from three industries – semiconductors, telecom and defense – that each break the drawing rules in a different way. PerspireIP prepares and remediates figure sets for Dallas-Fort Worth filers who need one invention to clear the USPTO, the EPO and a PCT national phase without three separate redraws.

What makes a patent drawing Dallas brief different

Dallas is one of the few American cities where you can file, prosecute and litigate a patent without leaving the metroplex. The USPTO has had a permanent presence downtown since 2015, the Eastern District of Texas next door has been the country’s number one patent venue in 2024 and 2025, and the Dallas Public Library has run a federally designated patent depository since 1977.

The filings themselves come from three clusters, and the drawing problems are not interchangeable:

• Semiconductors. Texas Instruments runs RFAB1 – the world’s first 300 mm analog fab, opened in 2011 – and RFAB2 in Richardson, plus the new 300 mm SM1 fab in Sherman, which began production in December 2025 with SM2 under construction. These filings live and die on cross-sectional layer stacks.
• Telecom. The Richardson Chamber of Commerce’s “Telecom Corridor” branding stuck to a roughly five-mile stretch of US-75 that still carries Ericsson, Samsung, Fujitsu, Cisco and AT&T operations, with Ericsson’s North American headquarters in Plano. These filings are block diagrams, signal flows and protocol state machines.
• Defense and aerospace. Lockheed Martin assembles the F-35 at Air Force Plant 4 beside NAS JRB Fort Worth on what it describes as the world’s largest fighter-jet production line, setting a production record of 191 aircraft in 2025. These filings carry export-control exposure that has nothing to do with line weights.

A figure set that works for a TI cross-section will not work for an Ericsson protocol diagram, and neither of them raises the problem a classified avionics subsystem raises. The rest of this page works through each in turn.

37 CFR 1.84: the rules every Dallas figure set is measured against

The federal drawing code is one long regulation, and in practice a handful of its paragraphs account for nearly every formality objection:

• Ink and colour – 1.84(a). Drawings are to be in black ink. Colour is accepted only on a granted petition under 37 CFR 1.84(a)(2) with the fee paid, and only where colour is the only practicable medium to disclose the subject matter. Most utility applications do not qualify and should not try.
• Photographs – 1.84(b). Photographs are permitted where the invention cannot be illustrated in an India-ink drawing – cell cultures, metallurgical microstructures, certain crystal forms. They must still meet the sheet requirements, and mixing photographs and line drawings in one application invites objection.
• Margins – 1.84(g). Minimum 2.5 cm top, 2.5 cm left, 1.5 cm right and 1.0 cm bottom. The bottom margin is the one most often got wrong, usually by assuming symmetry with the right-hand margin.
• Hatching and shading – 1.84(h). Sectional views require hatching that does not obscure reference characters or lead lines, and different hatching patterns should distinguish different materials.
• Reference characters – 1.84(p). Numerals and letters must be plain, legible and at least 0.32 cm (one-eighth inch) high. Characters not mentioned in the description must not appear, and the reverse holds too.

Our full treatment of the federal rule sits in our guide to USPTO patent drawing requirements under 37 CFR 1.84, and the content rules that sit alongside it in 37 CFR 1.83.

One structural point worth internalising: a drawing objection is a formality, not a rejection on the merits. It does not threaten your claims. It does delay the grant of a right your competitors are already designing around, and in a fast-moving semiconductor or handset programme that delay is the cost.

Design filings: what 37 CFR 1.152 adds

Where a Dallas client is protecting appearance rather than function – a handset bezel, an instrument cluster, a consumer enclosure – the governing rule changes. In a design application there are no descriptive words to fall back on: the single claim points at the figures, so the figures are the invention.

37 CFR 1.152 requires a drawing complying with 37 CFR 1.84 and a sufficient number of views to constitute a complete disclosure of the appearance of the design. It says appropriate and adequate surface shading should be used to show the character or contour of the surfaces represented. It bars solid black surface shading except to represent the colour black or colour contrast. And it permits broken lines to show visible environmental structure, but not to show hidden planes and surfaces that cannot be seen through opaque materials.

That last sentence is the one that catches engineering teams, because the CAD convention is the exact opposite: hidden lines normally mean internal structure. In a design case a broken line claiming internal geometry is a defect. Our guides to 37 CFR 1.152 and design patent broken lines work through the view set in detail.

Semiconductor filings: layer stacks, hatching and photomicrographs

North Texas semiconductor filings are dominated by one figure type: the cross-sectional stack. A device cross-section may carry a dozen deposited layers, and the examiner has to be able to tell them apart in black and white at reduction.

That makes 37 CFR 1.84(h) the operative rule rather than an afterthought. Different materials should carry different hatching patterns, and the hatching must not obscure reference characters or lead lines. The failure mode we see most often from fab process teams is a cross-section where oxide, nitride and polysilicon all arrive as grey fills from the process-simulation tool – visually distinct on screen, indistinguishable once printed.

• Replace tonal fills with distinct line hatching before filing, not after the objection.
• Keep lead lines out of hatched regions where possible, or break the hatching around them.
• Photomicrographs – TEM and SEM images – are photographs for 37 CFR 1.84(b) purposes. They are admissible where the structure genuinely cannot be shown in a line drawing, but a photomicrograph is not a substitute for a schematic cross-section, and filing only the micrograph usually loses you the clean structural disclosure your claims need.
• Do not rely on colour to distinguish layers. There is no colour route at the USPTO without a granted petition, and the EPO route is a different question again.

Sherman and Richardson sit in different federal districts, which matters more than it sounds – see the venue section below.

Telecom Corridor filings: the diagrams that have to carry labels

Telecom and network filings are mostly block diagrams, flowcharts, signal-flow graphs and state machines. These are the figure types where the usual instinct – strip every word out of the drawing – produces a worse application rather than a better one.

A block diagram whose boxes are labelled only “102”, “104” and “106” is formally compliant and practically useless. The examiner has to reconstruct the architecture from the description while flipping between pages, and so does an opposing expert five years later. Short functional labels inside the boxes, paired with the reference numerals, are accepted US practice and make the figure self-carrying.

The same discipline matters more when the family travels. Several European offices do not merely tolerate labels on these figure types – they require them. Finland, for instance, prohibits explanatory text in drawings generally but then expressly requires block diagrams, flowcharts and electric circuit diagrams to carry explanatory texts that facilitate immediate understanding. Germany’s Annex 2 PatV makes a comparable allowance for short catchwords on circuit and flow figures. A Dallas-drafted diagram stripped bare for US filing has to be re-labelled before it goes to Europe.

Our guides to patent drawings for electrical circuits and patent drawings for software inventions cover the labelling conventions that survive both regimes.

Defense and aerospace: the rules that are not about drawings at all

For Fort Worth defense work the drawing risk is not formality – it is disclosure. Two statutes decide whether a figure set can leave the country, and both bite harder than any line-weight objection.

Under 35 U.S.C. 181 the Commissioner may impose a secrecy order where publication or disclosure of an invention would be detrimental to national security. While a secrecy order is in force the application does not issue and the disclosure cannot be published. Under 35 U.S.C. 182, disclosing an invention in violation of a secrecy order renders the application abandoned.

Separately, 35 U.S.C. 184 requires a foreign filing licence before an application on an invention made in the United States is filed abroad, unless six months have passed since the US filing and no secrecy order has issued. The consequence of getting this wrong is in 35 U.S.C. 185: a US patent obtained on an invention filed abroad without the required licence is invalid.

The trigger that surprises people is geographic, not corporate. The licence requirement attaches to where the invention was made, not to the nationality of the applicant or the location of the parent company. A subsystem conceived by engineers in Fort Worth is a US-made invention even if the filing entity sits in Europe, and a foreign-headquartered supplier with a North Texas engineering team is squarely inside 35 U.S.C. 184.

In practice this means figure sets for defense programmes should not be circulated to overseas drawing vendors before the licence position is settled. Our guide to foreign filing licences and export controls sets out the licence mechanics.

Where a Dallas patent dispute is heard – and why the county line decides it

This is the single most practical piece of local knowledge in North Texas patent practice, and it is governed by 28 U.S.C. 124.

• Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division covers Dallas, Ellis, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Navarro and Rockwall counties, with court held at Dallas.
• Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division covers Collin, Cooke, Delta, Denton, Fannin, Grayson, Hopkins and Lamar counties, with court held at Sherman and at the Plano courthouse, which operates as an annex to Sherman.

So a company in Dallas proper litigates in the Northern District. A company in Plano, Frisco or McKinney – all Collin County – litigates in the Eastern District, which has returned to the top of the national patent-litigation rankings in 2024 and 2025. Sherman, where TI’s newest fabs are, is in Grayson County and therefore also Eastern District.

Richardson spans Dallas and Collin counties. The Telecom Corridor is split across two federal districts, and for a Richardson defendant the applicable district can depend on which side of the county line the relevant facility sits. That is not a technicality – it decides the local patent rules, the scheduling practice and the jury pool.

Above both, appeals in patent cases go to the Federal Circuit. Validity can also be challenged at the PTAB through inter partes review, and imports can be attacked at the ITC under Section 337. Our guide to inter partes review covers the PTAB route, where published figures are routinely the evidence that decides what a prior-art reference actually disclosed. Figures are not decoration in litigation; they are exhibits.

Filing abroad from Dallas: where the US drawing rules stop applying

Most Dallas filing programmes do not stop at the USPTO, and the drawing rules do not travel with the application.

At the EPO, the old provision on the form of drawings – Rule 46 EPC – was deleted with effect from 1 February 2023, and the detail moved into a Decision of the President of the EPO. That change is what allowed the EPO to move again: under a Decision of the President of 25 July 2025 (OJ EPO 2025, A49) and the accompanying Notice (OJ EPO 2025, A57), the EPO has accepted drawings filed electronically in colour or greyscale since 1 October 2025, provided they are contrast-rich and clear at 300 dpi. Any vendor still citing Rule 46 EPC as live law is working from a rule that has not existed for nearly three years.

The PCT did not change. Rule 11.13(a) still requires drawings in durable, black, sufficiently dense and dark, uniformly thick and well-defined lines “without colorings”. So routing through the international phase does not buy you colour, and adding colour later to a case that published in black and white invites an added-matter objection.

The practical sequence for a Dallas filer is therefore: prepare a black-line set that satisfies 37 CFR 1.84 and PCT Rule 11.13, because that set is accepted essentially everywhere; then add a colour or greyscale variant only where a specific office both permits it and the disclosure genuinely benefits. Our comparison of USPTO vs EPO patent drawings and our guide to PCT drawing requirements set out the three regimes side by side.

Local resources Dallas filers should know about

Two federal resources sit inside the city and are under-used by local filers.

The USPTO’s Dallas office occupies the Terminal Annex Federal Building at 207 South Houston Street, Suite 159, downtown beside Dealey Plaza and Union Station. It opened in 2015 as the Texas Regional Office and has since been renamed the Southwest Regional Outreach Office, now serving Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. It was staffed from the outset with patent examiners and Patent Trial and Appeal Board judges, which is why PTAB matters can be heard in Dallas rather than only in Alexandria.

The Dallas Public Library has been a USPTO-designated Patent and Trademark Resource Center since 1977 and remains the only public library in Texas with that designation. The PTRC sits on the sixth floor of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library at 1515 Young Street, with staff trained by the USPTO to assist with patent and trademark searching.

Neither replaces counsel, and neither will prepare your figures. Both are useful for early-stage searching and for inventors who want to understand what a published figure set looks like before commissioning one.

What we deliver for a Dallas figure set

A PerspireIP engagement for a patent drawing Dallas brief is deliberately narrow: compliant figures, and a clear statement of what had to change and why.

• Formal utility figures to 37 CFR 1.84 – sheet, margin, hatching, line-weight and reference-character compliant, legible at reduction.
• Design figure sets to 37 CFR 1.152, with a view set that constitutes a complete disclosure and broken lines used only for environment.
• Semiconductor cross-sections with distinct material hatching replacing tonal fills, and lead lines kept clear of hatched regions.
• Labelled block diagrams and flowcharts that satisfy US practice and survive the European offices that require explanatory text.
• Dual-regime variants where a family is going to both the USPTO and the EPO – a black-line master plus a colour or greyscale variant where the receiving office allows it.
• Remediation of an existing set against an office action, including replacement-sheet preparation.

We work from CAD exports, process-simulation output, photographs, hand sketches or a competitor’s published figures. For defense programmes we will hold work onshore until the foreign filing licence position is confirmed.

IP Landscape & Resources in Dallas

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Dallas:

• United States Patent and Trademark Office — where US patent applications are filed and examined, and the source of 37 CFR 1.84 and 1.152
• USPTO Southwest Regional Outreach Office (Dallas) — the USPTO's Dallas office at 207 South Houston Street, opened in 2015, with examiners and PTAB judges
• U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas — the Dallas Division hears patent cases arising in Dallas County and six neighbouring counties
• U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas — the Sherman Division, sitting at Sherman and Plano, covers Collin, Denton and Grayson counties
• Dallas Public Library Patent and Trademark Resource Center — USPTO-designated patent depository since 1977, the only one in Texas, at 1515 Young Street

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