Pre-Exam 2023 results and Examiner's Report are finally out! - [Update 24 May:] as well as corrected decisions

The results for Pre-Exam 2023 came out yesterday afternoon, 10 May, finally, in MyEQE.

Congratulations to all that passed!

The Examiner's Report for Pre-Exam 2023 was published "already earlier" this Monday, 8 May (here).

Surprisingly only two statements were neutralized: 5.3 (needed a 2024 calendar) and 16.3 (in our version 16.1).

Statement 14.4 in part 3, for which we gave arguments for T (official answer) as well as for F, was not neutralized.

The statements in part 4 relying on the interpretation of "water-based solvent" being "just water" (and hence direct and unambiguous disclosures of %w/w of water) or "a solvent having a base of / based on water also including something more" (and hence no such direct and unambiguous disclosure og “water only”) were not neutralized - see 17.4, 18.3 and 20.1.


Please feel invited to post your comments (using your name or a nick name, not anonymously) to the respective parts of our Pre-Exam 2023 blogs:

Statistics have not yet been made available but the EQE secretariat – they are usually published together with the statistics for the main exam papers.


Update 11 July 2023: We were just informed by another tutor that the Examiner's Report for the Pre-Exam on the EQE website has been replaced by a new one (without that being easily spotted as its carries no date or version number, as as there was no mention on the website that it was updated). The original one had errors with dates in one of the legal questions, and was in English only. The new one is in all three languages. 


Update 24 May 2023:

Today, 24 May, candidates received the following email from the EQE secretariat:


“Subject: EQE 2023 Pre-examination - Communication from the Examination Board

Dear candidate,

We would like to inform you that after the release of the pre-examination results on 10 May 2023, we have encountered some discrepancies between the results communicated and what was to be expected in view of the Examiners’ Report. Upon conducting a thorough investigation, we have successfully identified the source of the issue, which is of a technical nature. Please be informed that the problem has been solved.

As a consequence, the results have been recalculated and must be re-issued. Therefore, the decision of the Examination Board concerning your result of the pre-examination 2023 communicated to you on 10 May 2023 is hereby revoked. A new decision based on the correct result is now available in myEQE.

Best regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Sincères salutations

The Examination Secretariat
on behalf of the Examination Board”

Read more »
15 comments
Labels:

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.

Read more »
2 comments
Labels:

Examiner's Report and Results Pre-Exam 2015

The Examiner's Report for Pre-Exam 2015 was just put online: here.
Update - 3 June 2015: an addendum has been published to the Examiners Report


The official answers (and where we deviated in our provisional answers - see below) are:

Q.1:  T, F, T, F;
Q.2:  F, T, F, T;
Q.3:  F, T, F, T;
Q.4:  T, F, T, F;
Q.5:  F, T, F, T;
Q.6:  F, F, T, F;
Q.7:  T, T, F, T;
Q.8:  F, T, T, F;
Q.9:  T, F, T, T;
Q.10: T, T, F, T;

 Q.11:  F, F, F, F;
Q.12:  F, T, T, F;
Q.13:  F, T, F, F;
Q.14:  T, T, T, F;
Q.15:  T, F (we had T)@, F, T;
Q.16:  T, F, T (we had F), F;
Q.17:  T, T, T (we had F)@, F;
Q.18:  T, T, F, F;
Q.19:  T, F, F, T;
Q.20:  T, "see above" (we had T), T, T.

 As to 20.2, the Examiner's report indicates:
  • The statement 20.2 indicates that the material of D2 should replace the material of D1. This is not a valid argument within the framework of the problem solution approach, since D2 and not D1 is the closest prior art document. Hence, the answer to 20.2 is “False”.
    The formulation of 20.2 was however unnecessarily complex. Just by using the expression “D2 could be replaced by” instead of “D2 could replace” the solution would become “True”, since there is no teaching that solid wood could be replaced by the material of D1. For this reason, it is exceptionally decided to award marks for the answer “True” as well.
So, our (provisional) legal answers and our (provisional) claims analysis answers would have attracted all 50 marks from the legal part, and -with 3 isolated errors- 44 marks from the claims analysis part, so a total of 94. Further, for 20.2, both T and F were considered correct, which "saved us" as we deviate for 20.2 from the originally expected answer (F).

 As a consequence, if you calculated a provisional score using our provisional answers, and had a different answer than we had for 15.2, 16.3, 17.3 and/or 20.2, your real score will be somewhat higher than expected, whereas your real score will be lower if you had the same answers as we for 15.2, 16.3 and/or 17.3.

 The different answers to 15.2 and 17.3 relate to-what is referred to in the discussion to our claims blog- as the "cardboard issue" - the official answers to 15.2 and 17.3 rely on cardboard necessarily comprising / being made of wood fibers, whereas we considered the term cardboard to be a generic term and cardboard comprising wood fibers only one of the possible cardboard types -as we indicated in the discussion to the blog-. I refer to the earlier discussion to our claims blog for all arguments in favour of either conclusion, which were all given in the earlier discussion between various candidates and between candidates and our team.

 @ = Examimer's report answered F for 15.2 and T for 17.3 -- however, appeals based on opposite answers were successful, so our answers T and F are (also) correct [comment added on 8 May].

 We will discuss the differences between the Exam Committee's answers and reasoning and ours tomorrow or early next week in more detail - please feel free to already post your comments now.

 Best regards, hope all of you that had a serious preparation passed this Pre-Exam and can now start preparing to sit one or more of next year's main exam papers!

 Roel

-----------

Yesterday, Pre-Exam 2015 candidates received the following information from the Exam Secretariat:
  • The results of the pre-examination of the European qualifying examination 2015 will be available on the EPO website from 20 March 2015 (12:00 CET) and will remain on-line until 8 September 2015 under the following link: http://www.epo.org/patents/learning/qualifying-examination/statistics.html

    You will be able to find your results by searching in the list for your EQE Registration number (EQEReg).
    The dispatch of the result letters is foreseen for the 27 March 2015. They will be sent by registered mail. If you are not present upon delivery, please collect the letter at your post office before it is returned to the Examination Secretariat.

    Please be aware that the Examination Secretariat is unable to resend any original letters and the sending of copies will take some time.     Please also be informed that no information concerning results can be given over the telephone.
Surprise!!! The results came available already earlier today (20 March 2015): a bit before 11 am!

 The document shows the results per EQEreg number and includes the following disclaimer:
  • Please note that we cannot accept liability for the information given. Only results as notified to you in your result letter are binding. 
    Note from the editor: unfortunately, this sentence turned out not to be an empty phrase - at some moment during the day (20 March), the results file  was replaced by another file wherein the scores were decreased by 2 marks for 346 and 1 mark for 28 candidates (out of 796 candidates that actually sat the exam, i.e., had a non-zero score) [Special thx go to to     Anonymous20 March 2015 at 16:01 and Rdiner20 March 2015 at 16:07 for having discovered this] - and was changed again later, back to the initial list - let's assume that that is the correct list, until other indications show otherwise.
  • Closing dates for the European qualifying examination 2016 
    The closing date for the pre-examination is 2 June 2015.      
    T    he closing date for the main examination is 8 September 2015.
      
  • All relevant information will be available in OJ EPO 3/2015.

Statistics Pre-Exam 2015 

From an analysis of the published results, we conclude:
  • # candidates enrolled:  811
  • # candidates sitting:     796 (non-zero marks)
  • # candidates passing:   591 (70 or more marks): 74,25% of # candidates sitting
  • # candidates failing:     205 (below 70 marks):    25,75% of # candidates sitting
  • average score:               75,39 marks (of candidates sitting)
  • maximum score:            96 marks
Congratulations to all of you that passed!!!!

 So, the pass rate is -as we expected in view of the increased difficulty level (see our "First impressions" blog)- considerable lower than in earlier years, where it was 88-90%.
(Whether there will be any corrections to the marks in view of the cardboard issue remains to be seen)

The score distribution is, in bin sizes of 5 marks and 1 marks:



Resitters

It is also interesting to see how the resitters have been doing this year:

Pre-Exam
Candidates
Failing
Resitting
Of which
Of which
Candidates
in that
in that
this
passed
failed
in:
year
year
year
now
again
2012
390
5
0
0
0
2013
643
2
1
0
1
2014
648
107
61
17 
44 

The scores obtained by resitters in this Pre-Exam compare to the scores when they sat in 2014 as shown in the following figure:


I consider the statistics quite alarming: the vast majority of the Pre-Exam candidates that failed in an earlier year, failed again this time!!! 

 One aim of failing an exam is to get a wake-up call and understanding that serious studying is needed. The high number of candidates failing again seems to indicate that they did not get this. Some may have failed the first or second time for other reasons, such as illness or nerves, but it seems unlikely that that holds for such a vast majority. Why do quite some candidates not improve? Did they study hard but anyhow failed again due to the increased difficulty level of this year (as indicated at least by the lower pass rate and the lower average score)? Or did they not study harder, and did they not recognize that they need to change their way of preparation and that they need to really start studying? Neither the EPC law, nor the PCT law, let alone their application to legal as well as claims analysis questions is such that you have any chance to pass by going to the Pre-Exam without a good preparation.And there is ample possibilities to prepare well: we provide good courses and good training material for candidates that do not have the level required for the Pre-Exam.
It was multiple resitters like these in the main exam that led to the introduction of the Pre-Exam!!!
And what I considers most alarmingly -and this may sound harsh...-: the resitters of 2014 are already active as trainee patent attorneys for three years or more, otherwise they could not sit the exam - or as examiners at the EPO for four or more!

The candidate that failed in 2013 and resat this year (skipped 2014), only improved his/her score from 40 to 59 - still quite far below 70. The other candidate that failed in 2013 did sit in 2014 where he or she with 89 marks: this shows that after a first  failure (which can happen to anyone, for whatever reason), taking the wakeup call serious and preparing well can thus lead to a huge improvement - it seems that this candidate decided to better be over-prepared for the Pre-Exam (looking into the future also for D, where your legal knowledge needs to be a further level up) than to just give it a try again!

As the Exam Committee indicated, the Pre-Exam is designed to give an incentive to let candidates start studying early, and with the intention to let candidates that are well-prepared (and well on track with their preparation for the main exam the year after) pass. You can study, practice and train all of this!
Read more »
176 comments
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Created By SoraTemplates | Distributed By Blogger Templates