What is the legality of making an invention/patent using parts from another companies product?
Say I were to take components off of an iphone and frankenstein a new piece of technology.
Or in the other scenario, what if this time I leave the device unmodified but by coding, I design some novel invention unclaimed and unbeknownst to them. For example using their vibration motor, OS, and microphone.
Is there a difference between buying these components independently and deconstructing the work of someone else’s.
There’s some confusion here. Getting a patent vs. making the product. Two different things.
A patent does not involve making something out of other parts.
A patent is an novel idea. I.e., you have figured out a new way of making something.
While a particular instance of your new product might involve parts from a given company, in general you would write your patent so you only specify the properties these parts have. So you would cover anyone making the same item using basically similar parts regardless of manufacturer.
I.e., if you invent a snowball thrower using a Toro snowblower, you would write the patent so it is based on any similar snowblower. It might very well be that there is only one source for what you’re building on, but you never, ever explicitly limit your patent to that one source. Maybe someone else starts making something that can substitute.
Now, once you have your patent and you want to make stuff then you buy stuff from suppliers and make your product. If Apple doesn’t want you to repurpose parts from their iPhone to make your product, then they will have something in their purchase agreement (and Apple is notorious for long agreements) that controls this.
Now for a coding only “product”, companies like Apple love it if you figure out new uses. To a point. Again, the legal stuff might specify limitations.
You easily could get into trouble, depending on the situation and the manufacturer(s) involved. Companies like Apple often hold a separate patent on the working of every little component of what they make, not only on the final product as a whole.
Method of manufacture is patentable. So in addition to patenting your new device, you could patent the method of manufacture “by disassembling an iphone and using the parts”.
You might also be able to lodge a defensive patent: “manufacturing from a disassembled iphone”, to preven people from doing that – but it would be difficult to get a patent wide enough to be useful.
Patented parts of an iphone might be used under licence. While the patent is valid, the license for parts you buy individually in a shop might permit construction, and the license for parts already used in an iphone might prevent re-assembly as something different. Licenses like that sometimes don’t apply to second-hand owners: it depends on where you are. I think that the USA typically permits second-hand use.
Note that many of the components inside an Apple iphone are protected by their own patents (like printed circuit boards, integrated circuit chips, etc.). It would be pretty rare for a complex device to not have within it other already-patented components. When the manufacturer buys those components, some part of the amount he pays eventually goes to the inventor who owns the patent on that component.
So when you buy iphones from Apple to use in your new invention, Apple is getting paid for whatever patents they hold. As are the people holding the patents on the chips inside the iphone. All perfectly legal.
Thank you this was a fantastic answer, your snowball example made everything clear for me. I got so caught up trying to discern where the limit was for repurposing components that I forgot that is irrelevant. Like you said it would would be far broader and encompasses more than just one manufacturer parts.
I only have one patent so far and am still navigating the legal waters. Many thanks and salutations!