What do provisional rights allow a patent owner to do?

Provisional rights allow a patent owner to seek damages for infringement that occurs after the publication of a patent application but before the patent is officially granted. This provision is pivotal because it connects the patent application process to potential monetary recovery, providing a safeguard to inventors who have disclosed their inventions to the public via a published application.

When an inventor files a patent application and it gets published, certain rights come into play, which can include the ability to pursue damages if someone else makes, uses, sells, or offers the invention without permission during the period when the application is pending. The damages typically can be sought back to the date of publication, provided that the infringer had actual notice of the application. This mechanism is designed to give inventors a degree of protection as they navigate the patent approval process.

The other options do not accurately reflect the nature of provisional rights: claiming priority over all other patents is related to the filing date and not to provisional rights, preventing others from filing similar patents pertains to exclusivity granted once a patent is issued, and modifying patent claims typically occurs during the examination stage rather than being related to provisional rights.