Q: I designed and made a luggage rack for motorcycles, that has tracks to accept Milwaukee Packout. Am I violating patents?
I hope to market and patent my design, but I’m unsure of my legal justifications (patents)
A:
Unfortunately, no patent attorney can give you an answer (or even a guess) without doing the necessary searches and other legal work. Sorry, but you will need to reach out to a patent attorney.
You will need some sort of legal opinion. You have two broad options. Firstly, you can get a written legal opinion that will tell you that you are OK. You would just keep the written document on file, put the product into production, and when you do get sued, you'd pull out the opinion to show to the court that you took steps to not infringe others' patents.
Secondly, for a fraction of the cost of the written opinion, you could ask the attorney to do most of the work and just tell you orally that you likely won't infringe.
In either case, if it looks like you'd infringe, the attorney should be able to tell you how to change the design so that you'll lessen the chance of getting sued.
Good luck!
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