Use Lion Recovery to restore Mac computers released after OS X Lion. If you attempt to use the OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive, a message will appear stating that you cannot install this version of OS X on your computer. This is correct behavior to make sure you install only the correct and most up-to-date version of Mac OS X on your computer.
Note: You can also use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant on your Mac to create a bootable image to make sure you recover the correct version of OS X Lion. To use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, you need to have your own USB drive.
If you have a network connection, you should receive the appropriate version of Mac OS X when using the built-in Recovery HD partition on Macs running Lion.
Learn more about Lion Recovery.