Cross shred all scrape paperwork immediately!

Unfortunately, I used burn bags.

My scrape paperwork went into large plastic lawn bags which when full I'd burn.

It took fourteen complete drafts to finish the engine patent application and nearly as many for the pump patent.

That's quite a few bags of scrape paper.

It appears that various pages from various drafts ended up as part of the published patent texts.

Changing the font of the patent application text from that used in its drafts might help with this [type of] problem.

If you're doing your own patent drawings and find that a complete drawings sheet must be redrawn to effect changes, you'll not want to destroy the first sheet and lose the many hours of work you've invested.

But, before you put the old sheet of figures aside for posterity, ink margins between the figures so the sheet is no longer in a form acceptable as part of a patent application, and won't be exchangeable with the drawing sheet in the PTO application file.

With the availability of inexpensive CAD software, high resolution laser and ink-jet printers, this type of patent file modification should diminish.

However, the security of your CAD files will have paramount importance..