Use, sale, manufacture and importing a patented product without permission or license may subject you to a claim of patent infringement. However, if you lawfully purchase the patented product from the patent owner or one who has a right to sell the patented product from the patent owner, from the information you provided, should be ok. Hope that helps and best of luck.

Answer Applies to: Kansas
Replied: 9/8/2011

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There are always two issues. Patentability and Infringement. If your design is novel and non-obvious (the regular tests for patentability), then you should be able to get a patent on your design. I want to mention that I am assuming an ornamental design otherwise you are looking at a utility patent, not a design patent. "Infringement" assumes that there is a valid, enforceable patent on the other product. If the product has not been patented or the patent has expired or not been maintained, then you do not have to worry about infringement. If there is a valid, enforceable patent and you add a design to the covered product (that you have purchased), it is very rare that you will be sued. Think of it like a car that you paint. You can resell the car with the new paint job.

Answer Applies to: Oregon
Replied: 9/2/2011

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You are making what is known as an "improvement patent". This is perfectly legal from a pure "patent application" perspective, but there are some potentially major legal problems. You can file for and prosecute your patent application without any problem (except that when your filing becomes public you might subject yourself to a claim for patent infringement by the owner of patents covering the original product based on the description in your patent application concerning how you used the original product). However, in order to make, use or sell the product covered by your "improvement patent", you will need a license of any patents or other intellectual property rights covering the product which you improved. If you are not able to obtain such a license, then you can be sued for patent infringement if you attempt to commercialize the invention embodied in your improvement patent. Indeed, as a theoretical matter, any use that you made of the underlying product in order to develop your "improvement" design could be deemed to infringe the patents and other IP rights covering the original product. In fact, even the experimental use that you made of the underlying product for purposes of developing your improved design could subject you to a suit for patent infringement, unless one of the "experimental use" exceptions applies (and these exceptions primarily relate to pharmaceutical products).

Answer Applies to: New York
Replied: 8/31/2011

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If the existing product is patented, then, assuming your new twist renders the new design patentable, you would need to either seek permission or obtain license from the patent owner.

Answer Applies to: California
Replied: 8/30/2011

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You can incorporate a prior patent into your patent, most patents do; however, you may need to license the prior patent to use or sell your patented idea.

Answer Applies to: Colorado
Replied: 8/30/2011

Disclaimer: The response above does not form an attorney-client relationship. This answer may or may not apply to you and should not be relied upon as legal advice. LawQA does not make any representation as to the expertise or qualifications of this attorney. This attorney may or may not be admitted to state bar of your state.