Patent Drawing in Eindhoven.

A patent drawing Eindhoven applicants file carries more weight than it does almost anywhere else in Europe, for a reason that has nothing to do with draughtsmanship. The Netherlands grants national patents on a registration basis, so the formal requirements are effectively the only bar the national office applies before grant. PerspireIP prepares figure sets for inventors, in-house teams and outside counsel across Eindhoven and the wider Brainport region at a flat $25 per sheet, camera-ready in three to five business days. The local filing mix – lithography, semiconductors, integrated photonics and medical technology – produces a distinctive set of drawing problems, and this page explains how each is handled.

Which rules govern a patent drawing Eindhoven applicants file

There is no single Dutch drawing standard covering every route out of Eindhoven, and most Brainport portfolios use more than one route at once. Which rule book applies depends entirely on where the application is going.

• National Dutch filing – at Octrooicentrum Nederland, the Netherlands Patent Office, which sits within the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) in The Hague.
• International filing under the PCT – Rule 11 of the Regulations under the PCT governs sheet size, margins, line quality, lettering and reference signs.
• European filing at the EPO – where the formalities are now set by a Decision of the President rather than by the Implementing Regulations.
• US national phase – 37 CFR 1.84, which overlaps with PCT Rule 11 without being identical to it.

In practice the PCT standard is the useful common denominator. A figure set built to Rule 11 clears Octrooicentrum Nederland and the EPO with little or no rework, and needs only minor attention before a US national-phase entry. Building to the loosest applicable standard and correcting it later is what generates avoidable objections.

The concrete Rule 11 numbers worth committing to memory: A4 sheets, margins of 2.5 cm top, 2.5 cm left, 1.5 cm right and 1.0 cm bottom, a usable surface no greater than 26.2 cm by 17.0 cm, durable black uniformly thick lines without colouring, and numerals no smaller than 0.32 cm high. Every reference sign in the figures must also appear in the description, and the same feature must carry the same sign throughout.

It is worth knowing what happens when a sheet does not comply, because the international route is unforgiving about timing. Under PCT Article 14(1)(a)(v) the receiving Office checks the application against the prescribed physical requirements, and where it finds a defect Article 14(1)(b) requires it to invite correction. Rule 26.2 allows two months from the date of that invitation, and an application not corrected within it is considered withdrawn.

There is one point of relief. Rule 26.3 requires the receiving Office to check Rule 11 compliance only so far as necessary for reasonably uniform international publication, so small margin deviations usually pass without comment. Grey, low-contrast or anti-aliased line work does not, and that is the defect most Eindhoven applicants actually hit, because it arrives with the export settings rather than with the drawing.

The Dutch registration system puts all the weight on formalities

This is the fact that most distinguishes Eindhoven from Munich, Paris or Stockholm, and it is routinely misunderstood by applicants filing in the Netherlands for the first time.

Under the Dutch Patents Act 1995 the Netherlands operates a registration system. Octrooicentrum Nederland draws up a search report on the application, but it does not refuse grant on substantive grounds. A patent is granted provided the formal requirements are met, whatever the search report says about novelty or inventive step.

The consequence for drawings is direct and easy to miss. In an examining office a formalities defect is one of several things that can hold up your case. In the Netherlands it is close to the only thing the office will stop you on before grant. The figures are not a secondary deliverable behind the claims; they are one of the few components the national office actually polices.

The other half of that bargain matters just as much. Because validity is never tested during grant, it is tested later, in court, by an opponent with every incentive to read your figures uncharitably. A Dutch national patent has no opposition procedure; a challenge is a nullity action before the District Court of The Hague. Reference numerals that are inconsistent between figures, or that appear in a drawing but never in the description, are exactly the ambiguities an invalidity argument is built around.

One forward-looking note, stated carefully because it is not law yet. In December 2024 the Ministry of Economic Affairs opened a public consultation on reforming the 1995 Act, including a switch from registration to substantive examination. That consultation closed in March 2025 and the proposal has not been enacted. Plan against the registration system as it stands today, and treat examination as a change to watch rather than to assume.

Where an Eindhoven patent dispute is actually heard

Eindhoven generates the patents. The Hague hears the arguments about them, and the Netherlands concentrates that jurisdiction more tightly than most European countries.

The District Court of The Hague (Rechtbank Den Haag) has exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over Dutch patent matters, through a specialist division whose judges include members with technical backgrounds. Appeals go to the Court of Appeal of The Hague (Gerechtshof Den Haag), which is likewise exclusively competent, with a further appeal on points of law to the Supreme Court (Hoge Raad).

The Netherlands is also a UPC participating state, and a Unified Patent Court local division sits in The Hague. It has been operating since the court opened on 1 June 2023, and several of its judges also sit as patent judges in the District Court, so the two forums share a bench culture as well as a city.

For an Eindhoven applicant that produces a practical split worth planning for. A unitary patent or a non-opted-out European patent can be litigated centrally at the UPC local division. A Dutch national patent, and any European patent that has been opted out, goes to the District Court. The same figure set is likely to be read in both forums over the life of a family.

The drawing consequence is not a formal one. Figures prepared for formalities compliance are the figures a judge reads years later when construing a claim, and a cross-section that misrepresents how a mechanism actually fits together is far harder to explain in a courtroom than to correct at filing.

The EPC formalities have moved, and Rule 46 EPC is gone

A large share of Brainport filings run through the European route, so any guide still telling an Eindhoven applicant to build EPO figures to Rule 46 EPC is working from a rule that no longer exists.

As part of the EPO’s digital transformation package, Rule 46 EPC was deleted together with Rule 49(3) to (12) EPC with effect from 1 February 2023, and Rules 49(2), 50, 57(i) and 82(2) EPC were adapted to match. The substance moved into a Decision of the President of the EPO issued under Rule 49(2) EPC, so that presentation requirements can be revised as filing technology changes without amending the Implementing Regulations.

Then the substance itself changed. Under the Decision of the President dated 7 July 2025, drawings filed by electronic communication may from 1 October 2025 be executed in colour or in greyscale, in durable, uniformly thick and well-defined lines, strokes or areas, provided they are sufficiently rich in contrast and suitable to be displayed clearly at 300 dpi. Drawings filed electronically in colour from that date are published in colour. Colour is confined to the drawings; the description, claims and abstract remain black and white.

There is a trap here for the Euro-PCT route, which is how most Eindhoven families reach Europe. The EPO’s colour concession did not amend the PCT. Rule 11.13(a) still requires black lines without colouring in the international phase, and the EPO will work from a colour version of a Euro-PCT application only where colour drawings are available on PATENTSCOPE and the international publication says so. Filing in colour internationally and assuming the EPO will pick it up later is not a reliable plan.

The safe approach for a mixed Dutch portfolio is unchanged: draft in line art that carries the full disclosure in black and white, and treat colour as an EPO-specific enhancement rather than the master version.

What Brainport’s industries need from their figures

Eindhoven is one of the highest patent-density regions in Europe, and its filing profile is narrow and technical. Each of its main sectors produces a recognisable drawing problem.

• Lithography and semiconductor equipment. The ASML and NXP supply chain files heavily on optical paths, stages, metrology and vacuum handling. These are cross-section cases, and the constraint is PCT Rule 11.13(h): hatching must not impede the clear reading of reference signs and lead lines. Dense parallel hatch across a multi-layer stack is the single most common defect we correct.
• Integrated photonics. Waveguide and photonic-IC layouts come out of design software as layered layouts with colour-coded masks. Colour carries the meaning on screen, and it cannot carry it on a PCT sheet. Layers have to be re-expressed as distinct hatch patterns or separate figures before filing.
• Health technology and imaging. Philips and its ecosystem generate device, anatomy and image-processing cases. Anatomical cross-sections need oblique hatching that breaks where a numeral sits, rather than a lead line dragged through dense fill, and reconstructed image data has to be redrawn as line art rather than screened.
• Automotive, additive manufacturing and machinery. VDL and the regional supply base file mechanical assemblies with genuine CAD models behind them. These convert well, but exported renders carry gradients and ambient shading that Rule 11.13 does not permit, and exploded views need numbering discipline the exporter will not supply.
• Software and AI at the High Tech Campus and TU/e. Method claims lean on flowcharts and architecture diagrams. Boxes must be sized so text stays at least 0.32 cm high and legible after a two-thirds linear reduction, which is the Rule 11.13(c) scale test.

Design protection is a separate track worth flagging, and Eindhoven uses it more than most Dutch cities because of its industrial-design tradition. Dutch designs are protected as Benelux registrations at the BOIP or as EU designs at the EUIPO, not through Octrooicentrum Nederland. Design figures follow different conventions from utility figures – broken lines to disclaim environment, consistent surface shading to show contour – and the two sets should be produced together rather than adapted from one another.

How PerspireIP delivers patent drawing Eindhoven work

Send whatever you have. Hand sketches, CAD exports in STEP or DWG, GDSII or layout screenshots, photographs of a prototype, or just the draft specification and claims. The figure set is rebuilt as vector line art rather than traced from a raster source, which is what keeps it compliant at any reproduction scale.

1. Send your material and name the filing routes – Octrooicentrum Nederland, PCT, EPO, US, or a combination.
2. A draftsperson builds the figure set to the strictest applicable standard, normally PCT Rule 11.
3. Reference signs are cross-checked against the description, so every numeral in a figure appears in the text and stays consistent across figures.
4. You receive camera-ready sheets in three to five business days, in PDF and editable vector format.
5. Revisions are included until the figures clear formalities, including redrafting in response to an objection.

Pricing is a flat $25 per drawing sheet, with no separate charge for the reference-sign audit or for revisions. For a Brainport portfolio running national, European and international filings in parallel, one compliant master set feeding every route is materially cheaper than three sets produced to three standards.

If you are working from CAD conversion or an AI figure generator, send the raw output and we will tell you what will clear formalities before it costs you an objection. If a deadline is close, say so when you send the files – priority turnaround is available and matters most on Euro-PCT cases, where a formalities invitation can consume two months you have not budgeted for.

IP Landscape & Resources in Eindhoven

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Eindhoven:

• Octrooicentrum Nederland (Netherlands Patent Office) — the Dutch national office, part of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency
• WIPO – PCT Rule 11 — the physical requirements every international drawing sheet must meet
• European Patent Office — European filings and the current presentation requirements
• Unified Patent Court — the local division seated in The Hague

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