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!
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Information on the schedule for the EQE 2021 examination papers - Pre-Exam

 "Information on the schedule for the EQE 2021 examination papers" has been published in the EQE website yesterday at the end of the day.

It indicates that:

"The EQE 2021 exam schedule is now available. Candidates are advised that the document may be subject to minor changes as testing continues.

The EQE 2021 will take place online using LockDown Browser. On examination days, candidates are advised to log on to the online examination system's internet platform at least 20 minutes before the start of the relevant paper.

Information on how to register and log on to the online examination system will be communicated in due course.

The pre-examination and both papers C and D will be split into parts. This means that candidates will not be free to allocate their time as they see fit across the different parts of the papers. To compensate for this restriction, the total duration of the relevant papers has been extended. Once the time allowed for a part has elapsed, it will not be possible to go back to that part.

 

Pre-examination - 1 March 2021

The pre-examination will have the same syllabus and character as before, but it will be split into four parts. Each part must be completed before the start of the next break, with the next set of questions only becoming available after the break. The pre-examination lasts four hours and forty minutes. [Note from the editor: that is the time available to work on the paper - you get 10 minutes extra per part; the total duration of paper and intermediate breaks from beginning to end is much longer]

Candidates will be allowed to print 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."

The details for each of the Pre-Exam (and main exam papers) are given in the document.

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Updates to L-book and P-book (edition June 2020, for EQE 2021)

   

We have prepared documents with updates to the EQE 2021 editions (published in June 2020) of our Q&A books:

  • ‘Basic legal Questions for Pre-Exam and  Paper D -book (“L-book”)
  • ‘Pre-Exam Book - Cases/ Exams (“P-book”)

These books are updated in view of:

  • Publications in OJ EPO after the Book was printed (OJ June 2020 – 31 Oct 2020);
  • Publications in PCT Newsletter after the Book was printed (PCT NL June 2020 – 31 Oct 2020);
  • Corrections to the questions and answers.

We thank all who provided any comments and all candidates who participated in our legal training courses, as well as those that gave feedback on our material via email, for useful feedback. Any further comments are highly appreciated (via email to TRAINING at deltapatents.com).

The latest version of these update document are available on our website (on https://www.deltapatents.com/webshop.html - L, P)

Also refer to our compilations of key parts of the EQE syllabus as in force on 31 October 2020 for EQE 2021, on https://www.deltapatents.com/course-links.html: 


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