Safely Claiming Priority From A Patent-Application Filed By Different-Applicant

A right to claim priority from an as-filed application is not just restricted to an applicant of the Priority application, but may be also availed by 'another/different' applicant for the purposes of filing a later application claiming priority from the priority application. Not only such other 'applicant' of the later-application may be different from the original priority-setting application, the later-filed application may be either equivalent to the priority application or a 'variant' (e.g. improvement or modification) thereof.

There may be a number of illustrations quoting the afore-described scenario:

1. An applicant (say party A) upon having filed a priority application (say application A) in country A assigns the application to party B. Party B thereafter files a convention application in other country, say country C (signatory to Paris Convention). In addition or alternatively, party B may also file a PCT application based on application A.