Some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legitimate, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out.

Here are the facts:

CLAIM: A COVID-19 test patent application is dated 2020 but was actually filed in 2015.

THE FACTS: The patent application, for a system to determine if someone has a viral infection such as COVID-19, notes that a related provisional patent application was filed in 2015.

But while the earlier provisional application is related to the technology in the 2020 application, it made no mention of COVID-19. Social media users are sharing the inaccurate claim through a meme, which implies that COVID-19 was actually known years before it emerged in late 2019. The meme also suggests such information is being censored on social media. “The patent of the covid testkit is hold by Richard A. Rothchild,” a meme shared on Instagram reads, incorrectly spelling the last name of the inventor, Rothschild. “It’s dated in 2020 but was filled 10/13/2015 and it’s called US2020279585(A1).”

But the patent application in question was filed in May 2020 and describes a method of using biometric data to “to determine whether the user is suffering from a viral infection, such as COVID-19.” Under a section titled “Related U.S. Application Data,” the application makes note of a provisional application filed on Oct. 13, 2015. What that means, though, is that the patent is related to the provisional application that was filed years ago. They are not one and the same.

A provisional application is essentially a placeholder for an intention to file a formal patent application, said Jonathan D’Silva, an assistant professor of clinical law and director of the Intellectual Property Law Clinic at Penn State University. Inventors may file a provisional application for different reasons, such as raising money or publicly disclosing their idea as they work on it, he said.

The provisional application in 2015 was for a “System and Method for Using, Processing, and Displaying Biometric Data.” The 2020 patent application, meanwhile, was a “continuation-in-part” of a previous patent application, which means that new material was added, D’Silva said. In this case, the new material included the references to COVID-19.

“Generally, you don’t have to guess what was in these other patent applications,” he said, since they’re publicly available. And in the earlier parent applications, “there was no mention of COVID-19.”

Fabricated tweets originated from account impersonating Hallie Biden

CLAIM: President Joe Biden’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden tweeted that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. She also tweeted that on election night, first lady Jill Biden phoned election workers to stop counting ballots and “rush in fake ballots.”

THE FACTS: The account that made these tweets is “fraudulent,” said the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children, whose board Hallie Biden chairs.

President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election, earning 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, and there was no evidence of widespread fraud. The fabricated tweets attributed to Hallie Biden — the widow of the president’s deceased son Beau Biden — resurfaced after circulating in past months.

The fake tweets claim that. on election night in 2020, Jill Biden was on the phone with “state legislators and the people who tabulate the vote” to stop the count and execute a deal to “rush in fake ballots.”

“President Trump won that election and my entire family knows it,” one of the fabricated tweets reads.

“Ms. Hallie Biden does not have a Twitter account,” the foundation said in an emailed statement. “Any account bearing her name is fraudulent.” An internet archive search for the Twitter account that posted the tweets, @HallieBiden, shows that it was suspended for violating the platform’s rules between late August and early September 2022.

The platform had a policy against impersonation, which it has continued to prioritize under new ownership. Archived versions of the account show that it posted numerous false and unverified claims about the election being stolen and about Presidents Biden and Obama and their families.