have examined how the growth of the contact line is altered by the chemical pattern. To this end, we have considered patterns where the typical lengthscale is comparable to the most unstable wavelength of the contact line, Λ$_{max}$. On longitudinal patterns, the film follows hydrophilic stripes preferentially, while the contact line gives rise to fingering if the width of the hydrophobic stripes is large enough. For small enough hydrophobic stripes, the film gives rise to a fingering process caused by the longitudinal pattern, where the width of the growing fingers corresponds to the width of the hydrophilic stripes. On checkerboard patterns, the film undergoes a fingering-spreading process as it moves over hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains. Using a kinematical approach, we have shown that the net growth rate of the contact line can be tuned by choosing the lengthscale of the checkerboard pattern. In conclusion, we have performed lattice-Boltzmann simulations of the evolution of a three dimensional thin film in contact with chemically patterned substrates We have demonstrated that the film can be oriented along a given path, that fingering can be triggered by the chemical pattern, and that the growth of the contact line can be controlled by choosing a particular configuration for substrate patterning. R.L-A. wishes to thank M. Pradas for useful discussions. We acknowledge financial support from Direcci´ on General de Investigaci´ on (Spain) under projects FIS 2009-12964- C05-02 and FIS 2008-04386. R.L.-A. acknowledges support from CONACyT (M´ exico) and Fundaci´ on Carolina(Spain). The computational work presented herein has been carried out in the MareNostrum Supercomputer at Barcelona Supercomputing Center. This information is available free of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org/. [1] Oron, A.; Davis, S. H.; Bankoff, S. G. Rev. Mod. Phys. 1997 , 69 , 931. VII. SUPPORTING INFORMATION AVAILABLE VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 28