What is the name of your state? CA
ok i'm a product designer and i can't talk about the product i'm designing so i'm making up a hypothetical story.
suppose i get hired to design the first ever swiss army knife, a SAK with interchangeable blades. my boss has a patent already. i design the knife and hand him the CAD files and he likes everything, EXCEPT there's one blade that he doesn't want to include, the screwdriver. the rest of the blades are fine, he says, but he doesn't want the screwdriver and tells me to design a wooden toothpick instead.
so i do like he says, now he has a swiss army knife with no screwdriver blades.
he files for separate patents for each blade, and starts to sell the product with a default set of blades. he also starts selling different blades separately. but no screwdriver blades because he thinks they're completely worthless.
so after fullfilling my part of the contract, we part company and i immediately patent and sell the screwdriver blades. my blades are compatible with the SAK, that is to say, they have the same mechanism of attachment as the default blades. that mechanism of attachment has not been patented. said mechanism is not mentioned in any of his patents. (of course in reality it would be, but in this scenario its not).
so that's essentially the situation i'm in, and i'm wondering if, in reality, it would be legal for me to sell and patent the screwdriver blades.
does anybody know about this kind of thing?
ok i'm a product designer and i can't talk about the product i'm designing so i'm making up a hypothetical story.
suppose i get hired to design the first ever swiss army knife, a SAK with interchangeable blades. my boss has a patent already. i design the knife and hand him the CAD files and he likes everything, EXCEPT there's one blade that he doesn't want to include, the screwdriver. the rest of the blades are fine, he says, but he doesn't want the screwdriver and tells me to design a wooden toothpick instead.
so i do like he says, now he has a swiss army knife with no screwdriver blades.
he files for separate patents for each blade, and starts to sell the product with a default set of blades. he also starts selling different blades separately. but no screwdriver blades because he thinks they're completely worthless.
so after fullfilling my part of the contract, we part company and i immediately patent and sell the screwdriver blades. my blades are compatible with the SAK, that is to say, they have the same mechanism of attachment as the default blades. that mechanism of attachment has not been patented. said mechanism is not mentioned in any of his patents. (of course in reality it would be, but in this scenario its not).
so that's essentially the situation i'm in, and i'm wondering if, in reality, it would be legal for me to sell and patent the screwdriver blades.
does anybody know about this kind of thing?