I filed a US patent application in February and requested early publication. The patent application was just published, and the drawing on the cover page is not the one I suggested.
In fact, the drawing selected by the patent office for the cover page is just a page full of text that shows the interface for one small part of my claimed invention. That drawing is just for enablement purposes and provides no information about the invention to people looking at the cover page. Selecting that drawing seems to be a clear mistake.
But I'm not sure the patent office will see it that way. MPEP 1130 says that the patent office will republish a patent application if it made a material mistake in the publication. Otherwise I need to pay $300 if I want the application republished, and I guess they could include the same drawing again.
I would like to have a better drawing on the cover page. Anyone have any experience with this? Any advice on how to make my case with the patent office in a request for republication? I don't want to accuse them of making a stupid mistake, of course, but I think they did.