Tuesday, February 27, 2018 Pre-Exam 2018: our answers to the claims analysis questions

Claims analysis part of the Pre-Exam 2018 (paper available here: English, French, and German) was addressing jugs with replaceable filter cartridges.

Monday, February 26, 2018 Pre-Exam 2018: our answers to the legal part

As in the last two years, the legal questions were a mix of questions addressing standard topics, e.g. time limits, prior art, amendments, opposition, translations, EP-entry, and questions addressing topics that candidates are less familiar with such as late-filed claims, late-filed missing drawings, oral proceedings and interlocutory revision. Also, a question testing whether a patent gives the unconditional right to produce and/or sell or not was again part of the pre-exam.
Well-prepared candidates having good knowledge of the EPC and PCT and knowing their material  well (reference books, Guidelines, PCT Applicants' Guide, Euro-PCT Guide) for fast look-up should have been able to answer most of the statements correctly, provided they had their material updated to the legal status of 31 October 2017.
I expect that, as the previous two years, many candidates needed 1,5-2 hours for the legal part and the full 4 hours for the whole paper.

Our answers for the legal questions of the Pre-Exam 2018 (paper available here: English, French, and German):

Monday, February 26, 2018 Pre-Exam 2018: first impressions?

To all who sat the Pre-Exam today:

What are your first impressions to this year's Pre-Exam (English, French, and German)? 

Any general or specific comments?

Were the legal topics well balanced?

Were the various aspects of claims analysis well balanced?

Was the balance between EPC and PCT right for you?

Which of the legal questions did you consider particularly difficult, and which relatively 'easy'?

How much time did you allocate for the legal questions, how much for the claims analysis part? Did you deviate from our original plan (for example, took more time for the legal questions than planned)?

Which part did you do first, the legal part or the claims analysis?

How many marks do you expect to have scored in the legal part, in the claims analysis, and for the whole paper?

What is your expectation of the pass rate and the average score?

How did this year's paper compare to the earlier pre-exams of 2015-2017 (assuming your practiced those) w.r.t. the pre-exam as a whole, w.r.t. the legal part and w.r.t. the claims analysis part? 

The paper and our answers

Copies of the paper are available in all three languages: English available, French available, and German available. (With special thanks to the candidates that provided these clean copies). 

The core of our answers will be given in two separate blog posts: one for the legal questions and another post for the claims analysis part.

We look forward to your comments!
Comments are welcome in any official EPO language, not just English. So, comments in German and French are also very welcome!

Please do not post your comments anonymously - it is allowed, but it makes responding more difficult and rather clumsy ("Dear Mr/Mrs/Ms Anonymous of 13-13-2018 13:13"), whereas using your real name or a pseudonym is more personal, more interesting and makes a more attractive conversation. You do not need to log in or make an account - it is OK to just put your (nick) name at the end of your post.

Please post your comments as to first impressions and general remarks to the Pre-Exam paper as a whole, and to the two parts (legal part and claims analysis) as whole parts to this blog.Please post substantial questions to specific legal questions to our post for the legal part and claims analysis related questions to our post for the claims analysis part. 

Thanks!

(c) DeltaPatents 2018