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What percentage of difference needs to take place for a design not to infringe on an existing patent? I have an invention that mirrors the claims of this one but my design might be different, I wish there were more detail in their drawing. Any help is greatly appreciated!


John Crosetto

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Welcome to Ask Patents. The style of all Stack Exchange sites is to not have "thank you"s and a signature at the end of a post. I think some people got carried away with elaborate cute ending phrase of no value at one time. – George White Aug 20 '14 at 18:17

The claims section of a patent document describes in detail, the scope of protection granted to a patent.

A claim is said to be infringed if all the elements of the claim exists in your product. Similarly, a claim that includes process steps is said to be infringed, if all the process steps are present in the process that you intend to follow.

In other words, if all the elements in the claims of the patent map on to the features of your product, your product is infringing upon the patent rights of the patentee. It should be noted that, if your product does not have at least one element of the claim, then your product does not infringe upon the patent rights of the patentee.

Infringement of a product/process can also be analyzed by doctrine of equivalents. If the accused product/process does not literally infringe patented invention, the accused product or process may be found to infringe under the doctrine of equivalents.

Accused product/process is said to be infringed under doctrine of equivalents if the substitute element of the accused product/process matches the function, way and result of the claimed element.

You may refer to this link for more information:

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There is no % difference concept in patent law. The claims state what the patent owner has as his exclusive territory - drawings are just examples of a way to carry it out but the words of the claims set the boundaries between what you can and can't do.

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