Is a patent app a product killer?
dctoedt: Some points to remember:1. Until a patent is granted, the applicant has no legal rights under the patent laws (although s/he might have rights under the trade-secret or copyright laws).(Exception: if any of the claims in a published patent application survives the examination process without amendment, and that claim is infringed, then the patent owner can claim a reasonable royalty going back to the publication date.)2. The claims of an issued patent are what determine whether the patent is infringed or not.3. Think of a claim as a multi-part AND statement. If even one claim element is missing from the accused product or process, there's no infringement of that particular claim.(Exception:  A claim can be infringed under the "doctrine of equivalents," even if one claim element is not literally present, if an "equivalent" is present.)4. Claim A can be infringed without infringing Claim B.  (This assumes both A and B are 'independent' claims. On the other hand, if B is 'dependent' on A, then B is deemed to incorporate all of A by reference, therefore you cannot infringe B unless you also infringe A.  You can think of a dependent claim as using an #include statement to incorporate the elements of its parent claim.)(Yes, I'm a lawyer.)