Do patents protect illustrations?

One prevalent myth pertaining to regular patents would be the belief that illustrations present in a patent application are protected by said patent, however, as indicated earlier, this isn’t exactly true.

It should be noted that ordinary patents only protect the invention in question and not any illustrations or images of said invention (these tend to fall under standard copyright law) and these images and illustrations function as graphical representations of the invention, making a better case for the patent to be granted.

If an applicant wanted to have the same level of protection granted for these illustrations by a regional patent office, they could apply for a design patent which covers the protection of illustrated representations of a novel invention.