'The same effect' United States provisional patent applications and Paris Convention priority rights.

Provisional applications have become available as a low-cost alternative to US patent applicants, but the question remains whether these applications will be given the effect of Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property documents in other jurisdictions. The development of a provisional application program in the US is seen as a shift toward the first-to-file system found in most other nations. Practitioners should craft their application carefully to maximize the chance that other nations will accept the application as a valid patent filing.