Wednesday, September 28, 2022 EQE 2023 exam schedule now available: Pre-Exam

The "Information on the schedule for the EQE 2023 examination papers" is now available on the EQE website (first version 27 September 2022; updated version 19 December 2022)

The EQE 2023 will take place online using the same setup as the EQE of 2021 and 2022.

The pre-examination will have the same syllabus and character as before, but -as in 2021 and 2022- it will be split into four parts of 70 minutes, each part having 5 questions (4 statement per question). Each part must be completed before the start of the next break, with the next set of questions only becoming available after the break. Once the time allowed for a part has elapsed, it will not be possible to go back to that part. The pre-examination lasts four hours and forty minutes.

Candidates will be allowed to print the description of the invention as well as the prior-art documents for the claim analysis parts before the start of the appropriate part. The documents allowed for printing will be made available during the break preceding the relevant claim analysis part.

No calendars will be provided (see here).

(Note that that the document may be subject to minor changes as testing continues. Please check the EQE website for updates)

Please feel invited to post your comments. You are allowed to post anonymously and do not need an account, but please give your name or a nickname for an easy and inter-human interaction.

Updated 20.12.2022: New version of Information about the Schedule document - also allows to print the description of the invention for each claims analysis part before the start of the appropriate part.

Friday, April 08, 2022 Pre-Exam 2022: congratulations to all that passed! (Result letters are now available in MyEQE)

Congratulations to all that passed!!! 

The Examiners' Report is not yet available [8 April 2022], so if you did not score 100 marks, you still need a bit of patience to know where you lost some - and where we may have given a different answer in our blog posts to legal and claims parts. And to know what has been neutralized and for what reasons.

Update 15 April 2022: Yesterday, the Examiner’ 'Report has been published on the EQE Compendium pages (in English only; German and French translations will follow shortly).

The Examiners' Report addresses the translation/transcription error in [005] of part 3 (Q.11-15; 25 marks), and provides:

Remark: There is a translation error in the German version [005] of the description, second line. It should read Poly-Y and not Poly-X.

Due to this translation error the Examination Board decided to award full marks to all candidates for questions 11 to 15.

W.r.t. Question 20 (5 marks) in part 4, the Examiners' Report confirms that the question (as presented to the candidates in Wiseflow) failed to indicate which claim was to be assessed for all statements of Question 20, and it provides:

Since the following sentence was missing on WiseFlow:

“Assume in the following that inventive step has to be assessed in respect of claim II.9.”

the Examination Board decided to award full marks to all candidates for question 20.

No statements were neutralized in the legal parts; no other statements were neutralized in claims analysis part 4. 

So, 5 + 1 = 6 questions, 30 marks, were neutralized in this year's Pre-Exam. As a result, the pass-rate will not be in the typical range of 85-90%, but it may be expected to be over 95% - we will know from the official statistics (probably late June or early July).

The Examiners' Report also provides the missing/corrected text of part 3 and Q.20, and provides the intended answers for the neutralized statements, so that all candidates can determine the score that they would have achieved without neutralization.

Friday, March 18, 2022 Pre-Exam 2022: our answers to the claims analysis questions

The first claims part was about yoga mats and textile bags for completely covering and for transporting yoga mats. The second claims part was about sethod for preserving wine, or -more general- alcoholic beverages, in a bottle.

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!

During the exam, candidates had access to the EPO Legal Text pages, so including the full EPC Articles and Rules, Guidelines, GL/PCT-EPO, National Law Tables, Case Law, and the Euro-PCT Guide (HTML versions), but not to the PCT Legal Texts on www.wipo.int/pct/en. Access was to the live versions, so to the versions in force on 18 March 2022 (so not the version of 31.10.2021 acc REE/IPEE).

Candidates could access the exam in all languages, English, French and German.

The exam had a mix of common and less-common claims analysis topics.

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 18-03-2022 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.

Note: the legal part is discussed in our other blog post: here. 

First impressions and general comments can be posted here.

Friday, March 18, 2022 Pre-Exam 2022: our answers to the legal questions

This was the second online -EQE with the Pre-Exam being held in 4 parts, and with the questions almost fully being taken from the screen (only the description of 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 of the questions was randomized, i.e., it was different for different candidates. 

Also the order of the questions was randomized in the legal parts (e.g., the sequence shown below was presented to one candidate, while another candidate reported getting what is shown below as Q.2 as the first question,), but not in the claims analysis parts.

During the exam, candidates had access to the EPO Legal Text pages, so including the full EPC Articles and Rules, Guidelines, GL/PCT-EPO, National Law Tables, Case Law, and the Euro-PCT Guide (HTML versions), but not to the PCT Legal Texts on www.wipo.int/pct/en. Access was to the live versions, so to the versions in force on 18 March 2022 (so not the version of 31.10.2021 acc REE/IPEE).

Candidates could access the exam in all languages, English, French and German.

The exam had a mix of topics (common and some less-common), with some surprising absences: no time limits, no remedies, no EP entry, no 71(3) acts, no priority. Entitlement was certainly unexpected for many candidates, as well as some elements of the appeal question and details on (late) fee payment under PCT.

Until 2019, 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 questions and 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!

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 18-03-2022 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.

You mYay also want to check the other blogs: first impressions and claims analysis

Friday, March 18, 2022 Pre-Exam 2022: first impressions?

To all who sat the Pre-Exam today:

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

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?

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? 

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

How did this year's paper compare to the earlier pre-exams of 2015-2019 and 2021 (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?

Friday, March 18, 2022 Pre-Exam 2022 blogs will open after the end of the exam, 18 March 2022 16:40

Good luck with the 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 - for the Pre-Exam, we will use separate blog posts for the legal part and for the claims analysis part, and one for first impressions. 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 2022, 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 can not comment to this blog post; comments will be accepted from a new blog post "First impressions" as of 16:40, i.e., which will become available after the Pre-Exam has finished.

Wednesday, February 09, 2022 On the interpretation of Pre-Exam Questions and on Pre-Exam appeals

Candidates often ask us questions on possibilities to file a Pre-Exam appeals based on an alleged unclarity, alleged ambiguity or alleged error in a Pre-Exam question or statement or in the Examiner's Report or based on a different understanding or interpretation of the question or statement.

Below, a recent decision from the Disciplinary Board of Appeal (which is the competent Board of Appeal for EQE appeals) is discussed that presents a nice overview of the (limited) extent of the competence of the DBA, and also addresses how Pre-Exam questions and statements need to be interpreted by candidates, the Pre-Exam Committee and the Examination Board. The decision answers substantially all questions that candidates ask us on Pre-Exam appeals, so we present it in this Pre-Exam blog rather than in our Case law Blog. 

Also, we present a (non-exhaustive) overview of neutralizations of Pre-Exam statements/questions and of Pre-Exam appeals.

Thursday, January 27, 2022 Planning to sit Pre-Exam 2023: Enrolment possible from 1 Feb until 16 May 2022

If you plan to sit the Pre-Exam 2023, be aware that enrolment opened on 1 February 2022 and that the enrolment deadline is 16 May 2022. 

Note that for a first time enrolment to the pre-examination candidates must have registered at the latest by 15 January 2022 (see the EQE registration webpage and our earlier blog post).

Please refer to the EQE enrolment webpage for details.

Also refer to OJ 2022, A12 "Announcement of the European qualifying examination 2023 - Pre-examination and main examination"