This year's claims analysis part 3 was about electronic cigarettes while part 4 was about a Product X for use in treating infectious diseases.
Our answers to both claims part are given below. We have numbered the questions and statements for easy reference in the discussion.
We also let ChatGPT provide answers to parts 3 & 4 of the Pre-Exam.
Some practical difficulties were that only plain text could be entered, which means that in part 3, the figures couldn't be provided, and that the underlining when indicating amendments was not present.
If one would consider our answers (see seperate posts, which are not necessarily correct!!) as the intended solution and applied the Pre-Exam's marking scheme (all correct: 5 points, 1 wrong: 3 points, etc), ChatGTP achieved 16/50 points which is well below the required passing grade of 35 (normalized from 70 for the entire exam to 35 for parts 3 & 4) and rather a score associated with mere guessing.
See below for ChatGPT's answers and short reasoning (red marked where ChatGPT's answer deviated from ours):
The second claims part was about erasable inks.
“This invention provides erasable inks
that provide good writing performance when used in writing instruments such as
pens. The erasable inks are water-based inks that have a short "waiting
time", i.e. inks that can be erased soon after they are applied on a surface
made, for instance, of paper. Because the water-based inks are based on using water
as a solvent rather than on using other solvents, the erasable inks of the
invention are relatively non-toxic and odour-free.” [002] of the description
of the client’s application)
Our answers to this second claims analysis part are given below. We
have numbered the questions and statements for easy reference in the
discussion.
The first claims part was about cleaning utensils, in particular cleaning cloths.
Our answers to this first claims analysis part are given below. We have numbered the questions and statements for
easy reference in the discussion.
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.
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).
