How can we workaround a competitor's patent

I have actually done this with Optical Fiber. (See: http://msala.us/root/Homepage/Successes/Successes_Working.html )
The key is to find or make your product better than the competitor's, sometimes referred to as an "improvement patent"

What about the competitor's product is missing or irks its users; you find that issue and add it to your product's Patent Application.

We can take this discussion off-line any time. Martin