Mr. Wallace, I'm not going to tell you that you're right or wrong or that your constituent is right or wrong. Again, I am not a patent lawyer, but it's my understanding that if something is substantially similar, you still have a case.
I would encourage them to get advice from a very well-qualified patent lawyer. Many, many Canadian patent lawyers are also licensed in the U.S.A. There's a lot of cooperation from that standpoint.
My gut feeling would be they ought to look into that to see whether, even if someone tinkered with it a little, especially with a hardware piece—but it would seem to me it would be more likely to have good patent protection.