Patents Explained: Description of the Drawings

Continuing the post series explaining patents, we now address the drawing descriptions.

The description of the drawings is just that.  It refers to each drawing by number and explains what the drawing is.  The description is brief – it isn’t intended to go into great detail, but it does provide a general explanation of what the drawing is, the direction or orientation of the drawing, perhaps what the drawing features.  The description helps create some continuity between the drawings and the more detailed description of the invention.  The description is also useful for connecting one or more drawings – perhaps where it isn’t clear that two drawings represent opposed front and back views of the invention, or that one drawing is a sectional view of the invention taken from a sectional line of another drawing.