Does being first past the line count in SEO any more?

I've got a news site I've been developing and I receive press releases from companies, which I publish. On the whole I publish within a few minutes of receiving the press release and I know this is faster than my competitors.

So almost all the content is duplicate, but is there any benefit in terms of SEO to be the first to publish?

At a guess I would say potentially yes because search engines are going to think your site is the original source. But thats not based on any facts. Interested to see if anyone else has the answer.

If a bigger site (bigger page rank, bigger domain authority, with more relevant articles than you .. there are many factors) post the same news, after you but in the same day, you may end up penalised by Google becasue the bigger site is the favourite for Google.