Preliminarily, a “patent pending” designation on a product indicates that a patent application has been filed for the product, but it has not yet issued into a patent. Normally, one cannot be sued for patent infringement for activities occurring before the patent issues. A “patent pending” marking on a product does not give the patent applicant any rights to sue anyone. Thus, one could conclude that a product marked “patent pending” is safe to just copy. However, there are some caveats..