Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Canada

Re: Patent

I can answer the question from a U.S. perspective. A U.S. patent grants the owner the exclusive right in the U.S.A. to make, use, sell, offer for sale, and import the subject matter described in any of the "claims" of the patent. A claim is a long sentence describing various parts that go together to make up the invention.

The only way to know what a patent does or does not "cover" is to read its claims. The intrepretation of a patent claim is a matter of "law" so a naive reading of the patent and its claims should not be considered dispositive. But it would at least be a good start to look at each claim of the U.S. patent and determine if any of them is written broadly enough to embrace the gizmo as made with the different materials.

If it is possible that any one or more of the claims does so, then either avoid marketing the product in question, or get thee to a patent attorney and receive an "opinion" of counsel that the product does not infringe any valid patent claims.