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[iVenture]

Amended.. thanks

[Kaitlin]

Hi. I'm not a patent attorney but used to do patent litigation.  I don't know if Australia follows the same evidentiary rules as the US, but with our common common-law background, there could be similarities, so I'd like to raise a caution for you.

If you are thinking of litigating, you want to be very careful about what information you give out in a public forum.  In the US, any statement made by a party which can be twisted to be against that party's interests, can be raised by the other side in a lawsuit.  It is either treated as an exception to the hearsay rules or as non-hearsay.  If Australia follows the same approach, you may want to reconsider sharing specifics about which patent is at issue, the inventor's name, etc. and try to revise your question to use terms which get at the gist of the matter without divulging too much.  (Also, apart from the possibility of making an "admission against interest", there's the question of flagging your thinking to the people you're contemplating going after, which can have strategic consequences.)

That being said, you really need to be speaking with your own patent counsel about whether the patent covers as much as you believe it does.  Determining what parts of a possible infringing product actually read on the patent claims is best done with an understanding of patent law.

Good luck.