* The provisional patent application for the Slug algorithm was filed on March 27, 2017, and this is incorporated into the final patent at the beginning of the Description section. A provisional patent establishes a priority date for everything it discloses (which was the whole algorithm), and it gives the inventor one year to complete the application process.

* The JCGT paper was published a few months later on June 14, 2017, after the priority date.

* The final patent application was submitted on February 1, 2018, before the one-year deadline.

* The patent was granted about 1.5 years later by the USPTO on August 6, 2019.