Design patents seek to protect the appearance of an article of manufacture, such as a product or a portion of a product. Therefore, design patents consist mostly of drawings of the invention with a small amount of text. The drawings mostly define the scope of protection that will be provided under the design patent. Therefore, the details of the drawings for design patents are very important.
Surface shading in the drawings may be important to determining whether the patent design covers a particular third party product (e.g. an alleged infringer). The patent rules provide regarding design patent drawings, “Appropriate and adequate surface shading should be used to show the character or contour of the surfaces represented.” MPEP 1503.02. The rules further provide, “Lack of appropriate surface shading in the drawing …
