Paper B e-EQE 2021: The jury is still out

This year’s paper B was very difficult. The client's wishes and proposed amendments could scarcely be reconciled with the disclosure of the application as filed. Even among DP's experienced attorneys and tutors, this year’s paper led to dramatically different solutions.

Although it was promised that "Paper B will have the same syllabus and character as before", Paper B looked different in design from previous years. This year’s candidates were confronted, for the first time, with third-party observations, a computer-implemented invention (or not?), and client's claims with unusual (and incomplete) tracking of changes. In particular, the accumulation of these issues appears to have placed a very high burden on the candidates.

So far, we have been able to draw up several "solutions", each of which has its strengths and shortcomings - both in the light of meeting the wishes of the client, as well as good defensibility against the requirements of Art. 123(2), and with a clear narrative for the problem-solution approach.

For that reason, we will present below, for the first time, several proposals for amended claims, and our considerations thereof. 

Paper B e-EQE 2021: first impressions?

To all who sat the B-paper today:

What are your first impressions to this year's B-paper?
Any general or specific comments?
Surprising elements in the client's letter and the prior art?

What was the effect of doing it online? Of typing your answer rather than writing it by hand? Could you benefit from being able to copy from the exam paper into your answer? And from copying parts of your answer elsewhere into your answer?
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 situation that you had to take the exam largely from the screen (as only part of the paper could be printed) rather than from paper?
Did you experience any technical difficulties during the exam? How & how fast were they solved?

Did you have enough time?
How many marks do you expect to have scored?
What is your expectation of the pass rate and the average score?

How did this year's paper compare to the 2017, 2018 and 2019 papers?
Similar difficulty level?
Could you understand the examiner's objections? And the client's wishes based on his letter and his proposed amendments? Was the Art.123(2) argumentation difficult, if any? Clarity? Novelty? Closest prior art selection, distinguishing feature, effect, objective technical problem, and the rest of the inventive step argumentation?

Was the subject-matter well understandable, for chemists as well as e/m candidates?
Multiple independent claims? Functional features?


UPDATED! The paper and our answers

[Update 7 March 2021:] The core of our answers is provided here.


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 04-03-2021 20:21"), 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 this blog.
Please post responses to our answer (as soon as available) to the separate blog post with our answer.
Thanks!

Paper B 2021 blog will open after the end of the exam, 4 March 2021 13:00

 Good luck with paper B!

Our EQE blogs will be open for your comments and opinions w.r.t. the Pre-ExamABand 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 can not comment to this blog post; comments will be accepted from a new blog post as of 13:00