After the USA changed its patent law in 2013, the First Filing Principle applies practically all over the world.

This means that if two inventors invent the same thing independently of each other, the patent is granted to the person who filed their invention with the office first. The date of invention is irrelevant. If the Applications are filed very shortly after each other, a special situation may arise, namely that of “senior rights”.

Example: Mr. Früh applies for a patent for his invention on January 1, 2020. However, he keeps it secret for the time being and only goes public with a product one year later. He does not disclose the idea of how he could implement the invention in a particularly economically efficient way in the Application.

Mr. Späth comes up with the same invention idea independently of Mr. Früh. However, he develops a particularly advantageous embodiment of the invention before applying for a patent for his invention in June 2020. In this Application, he also describes his particular embodiment.

Who gets a patent and for what?
In principle, of course, the aim is to prevent the same invention from being protected twice. In order to achieve this, there are different approaches at the legal level. This means that the situation for Mr. Früh and Mr. Späth can vary from country to country.

Read our grips 3/2019