The phrase "priority of discovery" is correct and usable in written English.
It is typically used to refer to the principle in some countries that a person who discovers a new invention has priority over others in obtaining patent or copyright protection for that invention. For example, "The priority of discovery principle ensures that inventors are rewarded for their creativity and hard work."
The dispute over priority of discovery has even given rise to competing names for the same virus.
A bitter controversy that ensued between Ross and Grassi and their respective partisans over priority of discovery was one of the most vitriolic public quarrels in modern science.
This alarmed the slowly cumulative writer of what was to become The Origin of Species, who was ashamed of his "trumpery feelings" of disappointment that his "priority" of discovery was compromised.
Even the Anglo-Dutch wars provoked by commercial rivalry failed to interrupt this intellectual exchange, though there were some disagreeable quarrels over priority of discovery, such as Christiaan Huygens's argument with the English scientist Robert Hooke over precision time-keepers.
In order to claim priority of discovery, the original group rushed to hold a news conference rather than waiting to announce their work at an academic conference or in a peer-reviewed journal.
This particular ignorance is mostly a blissful one, however, demonstrating the near absence of certain types of pressure ("priority of discovery") that pervade the natural, exact and even social sciences.
An unfortunate disagreement over priorities of discovery and naming of certain Early Paleozoic rocks, later to be named Ordovician, broke up the partnership of Murchison and Sedgwick.
He was engaged in a vituperative debate with Newton and his followers over the priority of the discovery of the calculus, even being accused of stealing Newton's ideas.
The dispute on the priority of the discovery is documented in two articles in which Urbain and von Welsbach accuse each other of publishing results influenced by the published research of the other.
Although the Swedish scientists soon retracted their claims, the priority of the discovery and therefore the naming of the element was disputed between Soviet and American scientists, and it was not until 1997 that International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry IUPACC) established nobelium as the official name for the element and credited the Soviet team with the discovery.
The dispute on the priority of the discovery occurred shortly after, with Urbain and Welsbach accusing each other of publishing results influenced by the published research of the other; the naming honor went to Urbain, as he had published his results earlier.
