In patent law, industrial design law, and trademark law, a priority right or right of priority is a time-limited right, triggered by the first filing of an application for a patent, an industrial design or a trademark respectively.
What is a priority date and why does it is matter? A. Priority date refers to the earliest filing date in a family of patent applications. If the earliest-filed patent application for a particular invention was a provisional application, then the filing date of the provisional is your priority date.
The filing date is the date when a patent application is first filed at a patent office. The priority date, sometimes called the “effective filing date”, is the date used to establish the novelty and/or obviousness of a particular invention relative to other art.
Note that under PCT Rule 4.10, an applicant may claim the priority of an application filed in or for a State which is a Member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), even if that State is not party to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (Paris Convention).