diff --git a/scour.py b/scour.py
index 1ac43a0..24114c7 100755
--- a/scour.py
+++ b/scour.py
@@ -39,24 +39,12 @@
 #      <rect fill="red" ... />
 #    </g>
 #    in this case, fill="blue" should be removed
-#  * Move common attributes up to a parent group:
-#    <g>
-#      <rect fill="white"/>
-#      <rect fill="white"/>
-#      <rect fill="white"/>
-#    </g>
-#    becomes:
-#    <g fill="white">
-#      <rect />
-#      <rect />
-#      <rect />
-#    </g>
 
 # Next Up:
-# - analyze all children of a group, if they have common attributes, then move them to the group
+# + analyze all children of a group, if they have common inheritable attributes, then move them to the group
+# - crunch *opacity, offset, svg:x,y, stroke-miterlimit, stroke-width numbers (remove trailing zeros, reduce prec, integerize)
 # - analyze a group and its children, if a group's attribute is not being used by any children 
 #   (or descendants?) then remove it
-# - crunch *opacity, offset, svg:x,y, transform numbers (remove trailing zeros, reduce prec, integerize)
 # - add an option to remove ids if they match the Inkscape-style of IDs
 # - investigate point-reducing algorithms
 # - parse transform attribute
@@ -609,10 +597,12 @@ def removeNamespacedElements(node, namespaces):
 			num += removeNamespacedElements(child, namespaces)
 	return num
 
-# this walks further and further down the tree, removing groups
-# which do not have any attributes or a title/desc child and 
-# promoting their children up one level
 def removeNestedGroups(node):
+	""" 
+	This walks further and further down the tree, removing groups
+	which do not have any attributes or a title/desc child and 
+	promoting their children up one level
+	"""
 	global numElemsRemoved
 	num = 0
 	
@@ -640,6 +630,69 @@ def removeNestedGroups(node):
 			num += removeNestedGroups(child)		
 	return num
 
+def moveCommonAttributesToParentGroup(elem):
+	""" 
+	This iterates through all children of the passed in g element and 
+	removes common inheritable attributes from the children and places
+	them in the parent group
+	"""
+	num = 0
+	
+	childElements = []
+	# recurse first into the children (depth-first)
+	for child in elem.childNodes:
+		if child.nodeType == 1: 
+			childElements.append(child)
+			num += moveCommonAttributesToParentGroup(child)
+
+	# only process the children if there are more than one element
+	if len(childElements) <= 1: return num
+	
+	commonAttrs = {}
+	# add all inheritable properties of the first child element
+	attrList = childElements[0].attributes
+	for num in range(attrList.length):
+		attr = attrList.item(num)
+		# this is most of the inheritable properties from http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/propidx.html
+		# and http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGTiny12/attributeTable.html
+		if attr.nodeName in ['clip-rule',
+					'display-align', 
+					'fill', 'fill-opacity', 'fill-rule', 
+					'font', 'font-family', 'font-size', 'font-size-adjust', 'font-stretch',
+					'font-style', 'font-variant', 'font-weight',
+					'letter-spacing',
+					'pointer-events', 'shape-rendering',
+					'stroke', 'stroke-dasharray', 'stroke-dashoffset', 'stroke-linecap', 'stroke-linejoin',
+					'stroke-miterlimit', 'stroke-opacity', 'stroke-width',
+					'text-anchor', 'text-decoration', 'text-rendering', 'visibility', 
+					'word-spacing', 'writing-mode']:
+			# we just add all the attributes from the first child
+			commonAttrs[attr.nodeName] = attr.nodeValue
+	
+	# for each subsequent child element
+	for childNum in range(len(childElements)):
+		if childNum == 0: continue
+		child = childElements[childNum]
+		distinctAttrs = []
+		# loop through all current 'common' attributes
+		for name in commonAttrs.keys():
+			# if this child doesn't match that attribute, schedule it for removal
+			if child.getAttribute(name) != commonAttrs[name]:
+				distinctAttrs.append(name)
+		# remove those attributes which are not common
+		for name in distinctAttrs:
+			del commonAttrs[name]
+	
+	# commonAttrs now has all the inheritable attributes which are common among all child elements
+	for name in commonAttrs.keys():
+		for child in childElements:
+			child.removeAttribute(name)
+		elem.setAttribute(name, commonAttrs[name])
+
+	# update our statistic (we remove N*M attributes and add back in M attributes)
+	num += (len(childElements)-1) * len(commonAttrs)
+	return num
+	
 def removeDuplicateGradientStops(doc):
 	global numElemsRemoved
 	num = 0
@@ -2072,6 +2125,10 @@ def scourString(in_string, options=None):
 		while removeNestedGroups(doc.documentElement) > 0:
 			pass
 
+	# move common attributes to parent group
+	# TODO: should make sure this is called with most-nested groups first
+	numAttrsRemoved += moveCommonAttributesToParentGroup(doc.documentElement)
+
 	while removeDuplicateGradientStops(doc) > 0:
 		pass
 	
diff --git a/testscour.py b/testscour.py
index a7fae40..f284435 100755
--- a/testscour.py
+++ b/testscour.py
@@ -874,6 +874,24 @@ class MoveSVGElementsToDefaultNamespace(unittest.TestCase):
 		xmlstring = scour.scourString(open('unittests/xml-ns-decl.svg').read())
 		self.assert_( xmlstring.find('<rect ') != -1,
 			'Did not bring SVG elements into the default namespace')
+
+class MoveCommonAttributesToParent(unittest.TestCase):
+	def runTest(self):
+		g = scour.scourXmlFile('unittests/move-common-attributes-to-parent.svg').getElementsByTagNameNS(SVGNS, 'g')[0]
+		self.assertEquals( g.getAttribute('fill'), '#0F0',
+			'Did not move common fill attribute to parent group')
+
+class RemoveCommonAttributesFromChild(unittest.TestCase):
+	def runTest(self):
+		r = scour.scourXmlFile('unittests/move-common-attributes-to-parent.svg').getElementsByTagNameNS(SVGNS, 'rect')[0]
+		self.assertNotEquals( r.getAttribute('fill'), '#0F0',
+			'Did not remove common fill attribute from child')
+
+class PropagateCommonAttributesUp(unittest.TestCase):
+	def runTest(self):
+		g = scour.scourXmlFile('unittests/move-common-attributes-to-grandparent.svg').getElementsByTagNameNS(SVGNS, 'g')[0]
+		self.assertEquals( g.getAttribute('fill'), '#0F0',
+			'Did not move common fill attribute to grandparent')
 		
 # TODO; write a test for embedding rasters
 # TODO: write a test for --disable-embed-rasters
diff --git a/unittests/move-common-attributes-to-parent.svg b/unittests/move-common-attributes-to-parent.svg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1d7418
--- /dev/null
+++ b/unittests/move-common-attributes-to-parent.svg
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
+<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
+<g fill-opacity="0.4">
+  <rect fill="#0F0" stroke="#0F0" stroke-width="5" width="100" height="300"/>
+  <rect fill="#0F0" width="200" height="100" />
+  <circle fill="#0F0" stroke="0F0" cx="50" cy="50" r="20" />
+</g>
+</svg>
\ No newline at end of file