Patent Drawing in Karlsruhe.

Karlsruhe is the one German city where a figure set is more likely to be read by judges than by an examiner. The Bundesgerichtshof sits here, so every German patent dispute that runs its full course ends in Karlsruhe. So does the Bundesverfassungsgericht, which twice decided whether the Unified Patent Court could exist. The city itself files like a software and IT-security town — KIT, the FZI, Fraunhofer IOSB, the CyberForum network — so it files block diagrams, not gearboxes. A patent drawing Karlsruhe set must clear a strict national code with no colour route, then survive a cold reading years later.

Where a patent drawing Karlsruhe filing is actually examined

Germany has one patent office. The DPMA is in Munich, with a second site in Jena and a Technical Information Centre in Berlin. Karlsruhe has none of them, and a Karlsruhe applicant files electronically through DPMAdirektPro rather than across a counter.

Nor is Karlsruhe the state’s patent information hub. Baden-Württemberg’s PATLIB centre is the Patent- und Markenzentrum Baden-Württemberg, run by the Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart from the Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart. It is also a recognised DPMA filing office. Karlsruhe’s contribution to the patent-information world is different and arguably larger: FIZ Karlsruhe, the Leibniz institute that operates the STN search platform much of the profession runs prior-art searches on.

What follows for a patent drawing Karlsruhe filing is that locality buys you nothing procedurally. The drawing rules are national, the examination is in Munich, and the only thing that is genuinely local is where the dispute goes afterwards — which, in this city, matters more than usual.

The German drawing code is § 12 PatV and Annex 2, not the Patent Act

German drawing requirements are not in the Patentgesetz. § 12 PatV (Patentverordnung) says only that filed drawings must comply with the standards in Annex 2, and Annex 2 is the actual code — nine numbered clauses that an examiner applies literally.

• Sheets are DIN A4, 21 × 29.7 cm, used on one side only.
• Minimum margins top 2.5 cm, left 2.5 cm, right 1.5 cm, bottom 1 cm.
• The area used for drawings may not exceed 26.2 cm × 17 cm.
• Numerals and letters at least 0.32 cm high, drawn with instruments, not freehand.
• Everything must stay legible after electronic capture at a linear reduction to two-thirds.
• Figures numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, arranged without wasting space.

Two clauses catch people who have filed in the US first. Prior-art figures are admissible only if marked „Stand der Technik“. And reference signs must match in both directions: a sign that does not appear in the description or claims must not appear on the drawings, and vice versa. Our guide to patent drawings in Germany works through Annex 2 clause by clause.

Annex 2 is unusually literal for a European drawing code, and that is an advantage once you accept it. A patent drawing Karlsruhe set drawn to these numbers needs no judgement calls at the formalities stage: the margins are fixed, the character height is fixed, and the two-thirds reduction test is objective. Where German practice becomes demanding is reference signs, because clause 7 runs in both directions and a late claim amendment that introduces a new element can silently break the match.

No colour, no photographs, and no petition to ask for either

Annex 2 requires lines and strokes that are “durable, black, sufficiently dense and dark, uniformly thick and clearly delineated” and expressly without colourings. Unlike the USPTO, there is no petition route. WIPO’s own country chapter puts it flatly: the German Patent Office does not accept colour drawings under its national law.

Photographs are not among the permitted forms at all. That is a sharper bar than 37 CFR 1.84(b), which admits photographs where they are the only practicable medium. A Karlsruhe materials or sensor group that relies on micrographs in a US filing needs those figures redrawn as line art for the German national route.

One trap in clause 9: the electronic formats table admits TIFF 8-bit greyscale and 24-bit JPEG at 300 × 300 dpi. Those are file containers. Clause 2 still governs the content, so the table does not license colour — a misreading we see regularly. See colour patent drawings for how the routes diverge.

First instance is Mannheim. Karlsruhe is the appeal.

A Karlsruhe company does not litigate patents in Karlsruhe at first instance. Baden-Württemberg concentrates patent, utility-model, semiconductor-topography and plant-variety disputes in the Landgericht Mannheim, which holds exclusive first-instance jurisdiction for the entire state.

Appeals from Mannheim go to the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe. Onward appeal on points of law goes to the Bundesgerichtshof, also in Karlsruhe. So the city holds both appellate stages of every Baden-Württemberg patent infringement case — which is why a patent drawing Karlsruhe set should be built to be read cold, years later, by a court with no exposure to the prosecution history.

Remember that Germany is bifurcated. Infringement runs in Mannheim; validity runs separately as a nullity action in the Bundespatentgericht in Munich, with appeal from there to the BGH in Karlsruhe. The same figures are therefore read by two different courts asking two different questions: what the product does, and what the application disclosed.

For the UPC, Germany has four local divisions — Düsseldorf, Munich, Mannheim and Hamburg. The Mannheim local division is the natural venue for this region. We cover the first-instance side at patent drawing services in Mannheim.

Karlsruhe is also where the UPC itself was litigated

No other city has this history. The Bundesverfassungsgericht, in Karlsruhe, decided in February 2020 (2 BvR 739/17) that Germany’s first act approving the UPC Agreement was void because it had not been passed with the required two-thirds majority. Germany had to legislate again.

The court then refused, in June 2021, to halt the second ratification: the applications in 2 BvR 2216/20 and 2 BvR 2217/20 were rejected. German ratification followed, and the Unified Patent Court opened on 1 June 2023.

That is not trivia for a drawing page. It is the reason a figure set prepared today may be read by a UPC division applying European law, by the BGH applying German law, or by both — and the reason the master set should be drawn to the strictest common denominator rather than to one office’s tolerance.

Rule 46 EPC no longer exists, whatever older guidance says

Most German-language drawing guidance still cites Rule 46 EPC, “Form of the drawings”. That rule was deleted with effect from 1 February 2023 (CA/D 10/22, OJ EPO 2022, A101), together with Rule 49(3) to (12) EPC.

Drawing form at the EPO is now set by a Decision of the President of the EPO issued under Rule 49(2) EPC and applied through Part A, Chapter IX of the Guidelines for Examination. The delegation was deliberate: presentation rules can now change without amending the Implementing Regulations.

And they changed quickly. Since 1 October 2025 the EPO accepts drawings filed electronically in colour or greyscale (Decision of the President of 25 July 2025, OJ EPO 2025, A49; Notice, OJ EPO 2025, A57), provided they are contrast-rich and clear at 300 dpi. The DPMA has made no equivalent change, and PCT Rule 11.13(a) still requires black lines without colorings. A Karlsruhe applicant filing German, European and PCT in the same family therefore has three different colour positions to manage — see EPO colour patent drawings.

What Karlsruhe actually files — and the figures each case needs

This is a software, IT-security and systems-engineering city, not a machine-tool one. KIT is one of Germany’s largest technical universities; the FZI Research Center for Information Technology and Fraunhofer IOSB sit alongside it; the CyberForum network anchors a dense cluster of security and software firms; and EnBW, one of Germany’s largest utilities, is headquartered here with an energy-systems filing profile.

• IT security and cryptography: protocol sequence diagrams, key-management flowcharts, trust-boundary block diagrams.
• Software and data platforms: architecture block diagrams, state machines, GUI figures.
• Energy systems: grid and converter schematics, control loops, waveform figures.
• Mobility and engineering: sensor assemblies, test rigs, mechanical sectional views.
• Scientific information: indexing and retrieval pipelines, data-structure diagrams.

Almost all of that is diagram work, which is where German practice is quietly strict. Annex 2 clause 8 permits no text matter except indispensable words — “water”, “steam”, “open”, “closed”, “section on AB” — plus a few short catchwords for electric circuits, block schematics and flow sheets. That mirrors PCT Rule 11.11(a). A block diagram whose boxes carry sentences will not pass, in any of the three routes.

We have written up the symbol and text-matter rules in detail for patent drawings for electrical circuits and for software inventions — the two figure types this city files most.

The practical consequence for an IT-security filing is that the security argument lives in the description while the diagram carries only labels. Teams used to internal design documents consistently over-annotate their first figure set, and the fix is always the same: move the prose into the specification and leave the sheet with catchwords and reference signs.

Routes out of Karlsruhe, and what each one does to the drawings

Three routes, three different consequences for the figure set:

• DPMA national. § 12 PatV and Annex 2 apply in full. Black line art, no photographs, no colour.
• European patent. Filed at the EPO; form per the Decision of the President and Guidelines A-IX. On validation in Germany, no translation is required at all — German is an EPO official language, so the London Agreement leaves nothing to file even for an English- or French-granted patent.
• PCT national phase at the DPMA. Open at 31 months from priority, and a German translation of the description, claims, abstract and any text matter in the drawings is required. That last item is why catchwords should be short and surrounded by clear space.

A Gebrauchsmuster is worth keeping in view as a fast parallel right: formal examination only, a term of ten years from the end of the month of filing, and the same Annex 2 drawing standard. No abstract translation is needed for the utility-model route on PCT entry.

Whichever route leads, draw the master set to the German standard. It is the most restrictive of the three, so a set that clears Annex 2 will clear the EPO and the PCT without rework — see PCT drawing requirements for the comparison.

A pre-filing checklist for a patent drawing Karlsruhe set

Run this before the figures leave the building. On a typical software or circuit set it takes under an hour and removes the objections that cost a full response cycle.

• Sheet area within 26.2 × 17 cm, margins 2.5 / 2.5 / 1.5 / 1 cm, A4 one side only.
• All characters at least 0.32 cm high — measured after reduction, not in the CAD viewport.
• Whole set still legible at a linear reduction to two-thirds.
• Black line art only. No colour, no greyscale photographs, no screenshots pasted as images.
• Every reference sign on a sheet appears in the description or claims, and every sign in the text appears on a sheet.
• Prior-art figures marked „Stand der Technik“.
• Block-diagram and flowchart text cut back to short catchwords, with clear space around them for the translation.
• Figures numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals; uniform scale across split figures.
• No citation anywhere in the family that depends on Rule 46 EPC.

A patent drawing Karlsruhe set that passes this list will also pass at the EPO and under the PCT, because Annex 2 is the most restrictive of the three standards. Drawing to the German code once is cheaper than reworking a set per office, and it keeps the figures consistent across the family — which is what matters when the appeal reaches the Bundesgerichtshof years later.

IP Landscape & Resources in Karlsruhe

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Karlsruhe:

• DPMA — Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt — The German patent office, in Munich with sites in Jena and Berlin. It examines substantively and publishes the drawing guidance its examiners apply.
• Patentverordnung § 12 and Annex 2 — The binding German drawing code: nine clauses on sheet size, margins, line quality, reference signs and text matter.
• EPO Guidelines, Part A, Chapter IX — The current European drawing standard, applying the Decision of the President that replaced the deleted Rule 46 EPC.
• Bundesgerichtshof — Germany's Federal Court of Justice, seated in Karlsruhe — the final instance for both infringement appeals and nullity appeals from the Federal Patent Court.
• Unified Patent Court — Operational since 1 June 2023; the Mannheim local division is the natural venue for Baden-Württemberg.
• PCT Rule 11 — The international drawing standard, including the black-line requirement in 11.13(a) and the text-matter limits in 11.11(a).

Request Patent Drawings for a DPMA, EPO or PCT Filing

Explore related PerspireIP services: patent drawing services · patent drawings in Germany · patent drawing services in Mannheim · patent drawing services in Stuttgart · patent drawing services in Munich · Germany IP services · patent drawings for electrical circuits · PCT drawing requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions