Priority is a core concept of patent law as the novelty and
obviousness of an invention is judged as of the priority date.
Unless priority is claimed from an earlier patent application,
filed up to 12 months earlier, the priority date for an application
is the filing date for the application. Where an application claims
priority from an earlier application, any subject matter which is
contained in the earlier application which is also contained in the
later application will be entitled to the filing date of the
earlier application.
However, claiming priority in the UK is subject to a number of
detailed rules which are discussed in the following.
When must an application claiming priority normally be
filed?
