Wednesday, March 31, 2021 Pre-Exam 2021 - Results available in myEQE - Examiner's Report also available

Some candidates informed me that the individual Pre-Exam results are available in MyEQE now (31/3/2021, 15h)

The Examiner's Report is not yet available, nor is a full list of marks which would allow to determine the pass rate.

Congratulations to all that passed!

[Update 2 April 2021, 9:30:]

The Examiner's Report was published yesterday on the EQE website (Compendium).

• All our answers to Q.1-Q.9 in the legal part correspond to the answers in the Examiner's Report.
• Question 10 in the legal part (PCT-B, Applicant B/A mix-up) was completely neutralized.
• All our answers in the claims analysis part correspond to the answers in the Examiner's Report, possibly except 12.3 of our version (12.4 in the Examiner's Report): for that it is unclear whether the answer is FALSE or whether it is neutralized as no explicit answer is given, the argumentation suggests FALSE, but the argumentation also provides "the term is not necessarily unclear"  suggesting a neutralization as it does explicitly indicates that the statement cannot unambiguously be answered as FALSE nor as TRUE.. 
• No further statements were neutralized in the legal part nor in the claims analysis part.

[Update 7 April 2021, 8:30:]

• The Examiner's Report on the Compendium pages has been updated: the answer given in the updated version of the Examiner's Report to 12.4 is FALSE.

Please feel invited to comment!

Monday, March 01, 2021 Pre-Exam 2021 - claims analysis part: our answers

As in the legal part, when you check your answers with ours, note that the order of the statements within a question may be different!

Please feel invited to comment!

Note: the legal part is discussed in our other blog post: here. 
First impressions and general comments can be posted here.

[Update 4 March 2021 7:15:] We have compiled a version of the paper, in English; it is available here. In our version, the sequence of the questions and statements corresponds to the order as was presented to some candidates; other candidates obtained the questions (in the legal parts) and the statements within a question (in the legal parts as well as in the claims analysis parts) in different order. The sequence/numbering of the questions in our version of the paper corresponds to that used in this blog post.

Our claims analysis answers are given below.

[Update 2 April 2021 8:45:] 
The Examiner's Report was published yesterday on the EQE website (Compendium); all our answers to Q.11-Q.20 correspond to the answers in the Examiner's Report, possibly except 12.3. No statements were neutralized in the claims analysis part, except possibly 12.3 (see below).

[Update 7 April 2021, 8:30:]

The Examiner's Report on the Compendium pages has been updated: the answer given in the updated version of the Examiner's Report to 12.3 (12.4 in the Examiner's Report) is FALSE.

[Update 8 Feb 2022:]

Today, decision D 2/21 was published. The Disciplinary Board of Appeal reasoned:

"17. For the above reasons, the answer "False" cannot be considered to be the only correct answer that can be given to statement 12.4 [corresponding to 12.3 in the version on this blog] when taking an informed and objective view or interpretation of the wording of the facts underlying the pre-examination question 12 and the statement 12.4. As a consequence, the question of whether or not statement 12.4 is correct cannot be answered with either "True" or "False" as required by a "multiple-choice" question in the pre-examination."

Monday, March 01, 2021 Pre-Exam 2021 - legal part: our answers

This was the first e-EQE with the Pre-Exam being held in 4 parts, and with the questions almost fully being taken from the screen (only the calendars in the legal part and the application and the prior art in the claims analysis parts were printable).

In the legal as well as the claims analysis parts, the order of the four statements of each question was randomized, i.e., it was different for different candidates. 

Also the order of the questions was randomized in the legal parts (e.g., a candidate reported getting what is shown below as Q.2 as the first question and getting what is shown as Q.1 below as the third question), but not in the claims analysis parts. [Updated 2.3.2021, 9:20]

On earlier years, we just provided a list of T and F's for the 4 statements per question, as all candidates had the same order of them in the paper exam. In view of the randomized order, we now also provide the statements. If you check your answers with ours, note that the order of the questions and of the four statements from a single question may be different!!!

Please feel invited to comment!

Note: the claims analysis part is discussed in our other blog post: here.
First impressions and general comments can be posted here.

[Update 4 March 2021 7:15:] We have compiled a version of the paper, in English; it is available here. In our version, the sequence of the questions and statements corresponds to the order as was presented to some candidates; other candidates obtained the questions (in the legal parts) and the statements within a question (in the legal parts as well as in the claims analysis parts) in different order. The sequence/numbering of the questions in our version of the paper corresponds to that used in this blog post.

Our answers to the legal questions are given below.

[Update 2 April 2021 8:45:] 
The Examiner's Report was published yesterday on the EQE website (Compendium); all our answers to Q.1-Q.9 correspond to the answers in the Examiner's Report; Q.10 was completely neutralized (see below).
Note that in the Examiner's Report the order of Q.7 and Q.8 is swapped compared to our version, and that the order of the statements in most of the questions is different from our version.

Monday, March 01, 2021 Pre-Exam 2021: first impressions?

To all who sat the Pre-Exam today:

What are your first impressions to this year's Pre-Exam? 

What was the effect of doing it online? 

How did you experience taking the exam from your home or office location rather than in an examination center?

(How) was it different due to the due of the LockDown Browser?

What was the effect of the Pre-Exam being split into 4 parts?

Were you able to finish each of the legal parts of the exam in the 70 minutes available for the appropriate part? And for each of the claims analysis parts? 

What was the effect of the situation that you had to take the exam largely from the screen (as only a small part could be printed) rather than from paper?

Did you experience any technical difficulties during the exam? How & how fast were they solved?

Any general or specific comments?

Were the legal topics well balanced? Was the balance between EPC and PCT right for you? Were recent changes and stable legal provisions tested in the right balance for you? Which of the legal questions did you consider particularly difficult, and which relatively 'easy'?

Were the various aspects of claims analysis well balanced? How did you deal with the situation that only part of the paper (only the prior art) could be printed? 

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 2015-2019 (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?
In particular, how did this year's claims analysis part compare to the 2019 claims analysis part which had 2 cases of 5 questions each? 

The paper and our answers

[Update 4 March 2021 7:15:] We have compiled a version of the paper, in English; it is available here . In our version, the sequence of the questions and statements corresponds to the order as was presented to some candidates; other candidates obtained the questions (in the legal parts) and the statements within a question (in the legal parts as well as in the claims analysis parts) in different order. 

(We expect that the paper will become available in all three official EPO languages on the EQE website, Compendium, Pre-Exam at the end of the week or next week)

Our Pre-Exam 2021 blog is composed of three separate blogs:

• first impressions with your comments as to first impressions, the Pre-Exam 2021 as a whole, the e-EQE platform, etc
• legal part with our answers tio the legal questions
• claims part with our answers to the claims analysis questions

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 02-03-2021 22:23"), whereas using your real name or a nickname 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 (once those are available). 

Thanks!

Monday, March 01, 2021 Pre-Exam 2021 blog will open after the end of the exam, 1 March 2021 16:40

Good luck with your Pre-Exam!

Our EQE blogs will be open for your comments and opinions w.r.t. the Pre-Exam, A, B, C and D shortly after the exams. We will post our (provisional) answers to the various papers shortly after the exam. To facilitate the discussions, we will also post copies of the papers as soon as possible after we received reasonably clean copies.

Do not post any comments as to the merits of the answers of a certain exam paper/flow on the blogs while an exam/flow is still ongoing. Also, do not post the invigilator password or anything else that may be considered the breach of the exam regulations, instructions to the candidates, code of conducts, etc (see, e.g.,  e-EQE website and the emails from the EQE secretariat).

All candidates, as well as tutors who helped candidates prepare for EQE 2021, are invited to contribute to the discussions on our EQE blogs! You can post your comments in English, French or German. You are invited to post your comments under your real name, but it is also possible to use a nickname if you wish to hide your identify.

The DeltaPatents team

NB: you cannot comment to this blog post; comments will be accepted from a new blog post as of 16:40