Editing Interference proceeding (section)

== Parties ==
At least two parties are involved in an interference proceeding: the inventor(s) or applicant(s) who filed an earlier patent application are called the "senior party", and the other inventor(s) or applicant(s) are called the "junior party".  Both parties can be referred as "contestants", but that term is currently more likely to be used to describe the junior party.

* Senior party: Merely being the first to file the application does not grant a party legal protection. It counts only as ''[[prima facie]]'' evidence that he or she is the first inventor. A senior party can also file a "motion to dissolve interference" to request the dismissal of challenges to its priority.
* Junior party: A party other than the senior party bears the [[Legal burden of proof|burden of proving]] that he is the first inventor. The proceeding's administrator considers certain factors, such as the invention's conception date and the inventor's [[diligence]] in [[reduction to practice|reducing the invention to practice]]. Until the 1960s, a junior party was frequently called an "interferant".