In Droplets, Inc. v. E-Trade Bank, the patent applicant filed a continuation application that claimed priority to a pending parent application and an expired provisional application.  However, the priority claim did not include an intermediate continuation application filed between the parent application and the provisional application.  The Federal Circuit held that the patent-in-suit was only entitled to priority based on the parent application and not the earliest filed provisional application.  The full priority chain must be expressly listed in order to obtain the benefit of the earliest filing date.  Further, priority cannot be claimed with incorporation by reference.  Thus, the Federal Circuit also held that the intermediate priority claim could not be made “specific” via incorporation by reference.