PDF Guidelines
The USPTO will be receiving electronic patent application documents in the Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) format, from which images will be produced for the Image File Wrapper (IFW) system. Because the PDF format is so feature-rich, a standard is required to restrict submitted content to what the United States Patent Office is prepared to receive. The following guidelines set forth in this document will help to ensure that the created PDF documents meet the requirements for processing at the USPTO.
Document Formatting
PDF Version
Fonts
Color Text
Images
Bi-tonal (black and white), color, or grayscale images should be scanned at a minimum resolution of 300 DPI.
It is recommended to use images saved in a lossless format (e.g., TIFF, PNG, GIF, BMP). It is strongly recommended that the PDF creation software does not downsample images during the PDF creation process, as this could degrade the quality of the image. For color and grayscale images, it is recommended that no compression be used; CCITT Group IV compression is recommended for bi-tonal images.
The use of Alternates (a feature within PDF that allows for alternate images to be used for on-screen rendering and printing) is prohibited.
Images consisting of multiple layers must be flattened before embedding into the PDF document. The properties of all layers should be marked as "visible" before flattening. This ensures that the complete image is visible to the examiner.
Layers
To fix the layering warning message, you can create flatten your PDF using the following steps:
1. Open the PDF file
2. Choose File > Print
3. Select the PDF in the Printer Name drop-down menu
4. Click on the Advanced tab (the location may differ for different PDF writers).
5. Select Print as Image and 300dpi
6. Click OK to close the Advanced Print Setup dialog box and then click OK again
7. The Save PDF File dialog box should appear. Save a copy of the PDF with a new file name.
Object Content
Content that cannot render (be viewed) directly or completely to a printed page, including: multimedia (e.g., sound, video, animations, slideshows), 3-dimensional models (e.g., CAD drawings), file attachments, multi-page objects (e.g., Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, multi-page TIFF images), and commenting/reviewing features (highlighting, annotations, comments, notes, and the like) are prohibited.
There must be no dependencies on external files or resources of any type in order to render the attached image.
Security Features
Embedded Code/Viruses
Read " Files that can be submitted " for instructions on allowed file types and file naming requirements.