Due to the large and complex nature of the Internet of Things (IoT), various analysis and design methodologies are proposed. Design pattern is one of them to provide the solution for a design problem, which is recurring in nature. In this approach, we have presented design patterns for the IoT use cases such as service integration and IoT security. But the semi-formal nature of software patterns may lead to bugs in the proposed pattern. Hence, an ontology-based approach is considered for modelling of the IoT design patterns. Further, we have presented an ontology-based framework for the specification and refinement of IoT design patterns. In this approach, an analysis of meta-models and ontologies has also been performed for reducing the gap between high-level design abstraction of Unified Modeling Language (UML)-based IoT patterns and formal ontology. © 2021 World Scientific Publishing Co.