Priority Claim was first conceived back in 1883 by the drafters of the international treaties, now known as the “Paris Convention for the Protection of Intellectual Property”, which is one of the most widely signed and ratified agreements in the world. It introduced the general concept of a PRIORITY DATE – along with the concept of “first to file”. The general idea is that if two applicants file the same trademark, the applicant that files first enjoys priority over other applicants that might come up with the same idea. Now article 4 of the convention introduced the concept of CLAIMING a priority. It works like this: If an applicant has filed a trademark application in one of the approximately 177 member states of the Paris Convention, they can then claim the priority date of their first application when filing a trademark in a different member state for the same trademark in identical classes with identical Goods and Services descriptions.  As a result their subsequent application can then be assigned the same priority date as the first application, provided the subsequent application is filed within 6 months of the first application.