USPTO: Using Figure Legends For Labeling Of Figures

[david]

5/22/13 We have received a few office actions requesting capital letters to follow the figure number, i.e. change FIG. 4a to FIG. 4A. Most times, we do not agree with their reasoning to apply the below CFR rule as it pertains to partial views but we might as well make all letters capital in figure legends to avoid a patent office objection.

37 CFR 1.84(u)(1)
(u) Numbering of views. (1) The different views must be numbered in consecutive Arabic numerals, starting with 1, independent of the numbering of the sheets and, if possible, in the order in which they appear on the drawing sheet(s). Partial views intended to form one complete view, on one or several sheets, must be identified by the same number followed by a capital letter. View numbers must be preceded by the abbreviation “FIG.” Where only a single view is used in an application to illustrate the claimed invention, it must not be numbered and the abbreviation “FIG.” must not appear.
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In addition, the patent office use to accept single individual letters, such as the letter A, beside a figure and have the figure legend on the same page to number the figure. See figure below.

In 2014, this was changed such that each figure needs to be labeled with a complete figure legend as shown below.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by david.

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