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Probably a coincidence, in my opinion. How long ago did it happen?

When did you actually see that it was filed? If you saw it come out of the patent office a few days later, it was probably filed much earlier than your forum post.

If you saw it later but it was filed several days after your post, I think it is feasible, perhaps with the aid of someone like GPT-3, to put together a patent application that quickly.

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Thanks, I found out about the patent 6 weeks after I posted the MVP, and the patent was dated 5 days after my post. I'm defaulting to coincidence, but I guess there's a possibility it isn't.

Edit to answer your first question this happened between Nov & Jan.

If your post was earlier, it constitutes prior art and some of the patent claims can be invalidated.

Was your post archived at archive.org prior to that patent being filed? Or is there some other proof that you published before they filed?

Note that their claim being invalidated does not mean you get to patent it, since you did not file prior to publishing (via your post).

Thanks for this. I can definitely evidence that the post was prior to the patent submission and I have a live website which I can evidence too (also live prior to the patent). I think I'll need to speak with a patent attorney for advice.

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