I think the patent laws are designed for the benifit of the attoneys. You would think that they could do a patent search faster than 2-3 months. Take minibull designs for instance. He makes and sells his stuff. He may have come up with good ideas to the designs of stoves etc, but I don't think he was the first to come up with the basic idea. Seems that if you are thinking of a good idea, probably a thousand other minds are thinking about a similar idea. I was trying to form a start up electronic drum co a few years back and ran into the same problem. So many similar ideas on the net and all claim to have the newest and greatest. but in reality, they were only slightly different.
Oh and Jason, I would buy your water filter setup if you decide to produce them. I researched the pieces and although your setup is lighter, by the time I put it all together I could just buy something commercial. So think about selling em. You wouldn't be infringing on the basic idea and you wouldbe using parts for sale by others anyway. What would be their complaint? I think it's time for Klass Designs to become a viable producer of lightweight Bpacking goods. And that goes for anyone else that can pull it off with a needed product. I have other ideas that could be marketed and some are variations I learned about on this site. The irony is that I've been PMed and called brilliant for something that someone else came up with. I did fess up though and didn't take credit for it. But the idea, even though not my own could still be marketed.

Planning my next escape...