T he priority is of a particular importance in the industrial property field because practically all rights and obligations of natural persons enter into force from the date of priority and thus it is determined the terms of protection. The legislation on industrial property protection of the Republic of Moldova includes the main conditions for determining the priority. There are described three basic types of priority: - Convention priority; - Exhibition priority; - Internal priority. According to the Art. 4 of the Paris Convention the convention priority consists in that the first application was made in a State party to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and has priority in comparison with similar applications in other countries being parties of the Paris Convention. In the Republic of Moldova this term may be extended up to two months in cases which are independent of the applicant and invocation of the convention priority wasn’t made in the determined terms. Exhibition priority. According to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property a State party may present in an exhibition held on the territory of a State party inventions without titles of protection, and in this case the date as from which the invention was presented to the public as such exhibition is considered as the priority date on condition that the application be filed in the exhibition country. The terms of filing on such application are limited by the national patent offices, e.g. in the Republic of Moldova this term constitutes 6 months during which the applicant shall file with the AGEPI following documents: denomination of the exhibition, address and date of opening there of, name, forename and address of the natural person or domicile of the legal person who presented his invention in the exhibition, date of presentation to the public, number and date of the warranty certificate copy of description of the exhibited object, certified by the exhibition administration making evidence of identity of the exhibited object with the described one, and translation of the description in the national language. Internal priority - the priority of an invention which may be determined in accordance with the date of filing of an earlier application by the same applicant in respect of the same invention on condition that the application for which such priority is claimed is filed within 12 months following the filing date of the earlier application. In such case, the earlier application shall be deemed withdrawn. The internal priority may be claimed within 2 months following the filing date moreover this internal priority may not be refused on the ground that certain elements thereof for which the priority is claimed do not appear among the claims formulated in the application in the country of origin or earlier, provided that all the documents filed with this application disclose such elements. Priority may be determined on the basis of more than one application filed at an earlier date if the time limit for each application constitutes 12 mouths.