Tuesday, March 18, 2025 B 2025 - our provisional answer

Hats off to all of you who bravely faced paper B! Nico and I had a go too.

Like last year, it was a long paper. Again 30 pages (same as 2024), and this time 11 claims, 7 figures and 3 prior art documents, the third one covering multiple embodiments. It took me personally a bit longer than usual to get to grips with the technology, as there were many details and it took me a while to see what's important and what not (or at least less important).

Please note that at this point in time, we can only give you our considerations as to why we made the decisions as we made them. Like you, we were under time pressure, and sometimes just needed to go for a certain solution. And like you, we will have to wait for the Examiner's Report to see what the intended answers were and in how much deduction a certain different solution would result. If any, as in recent year we have seen that multiple different solutions were considered to be OK. So don't panic or get depressed if your solution is different from ours.

As to the main amendment to the claims set, both Nico and I decided to go for claim 1+ 6 and claim 7+11. 

In addition, in the second independent claim (claim 6 of the amended claims set, corresponding to claim 7 as filed), we also deleted the Hall-effect tranducer and replaced it by the magnetic field detector. This in order to solve a clarity objection as raised by the examiner.

In claim 9 (corresponding to claim 10 as filed), we replaced the "substantially differs in strength" by "differs by at least 20% in strength"  - also in order to solve a clarity issue.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 B 2025: first impressions?

To all who sat the B-paper today:

 

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

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 ones of the last few years? Similar difficulty level? Or harder/easier?

Could you understand the examiner's objections well? And the client's wishes based on his letter and his proposed amendments? Was the Art.123(2) argumentation difficult, if any? Clarity? Novelty? Was it clear what the closest prior art was?

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

 

What was the effect of doing the paper online? 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? Did you struggle with the online format in any way? What was the effect of the situation that you had to take the exam largely from the screen as only a  part could be printed?

 

Did you take the exam from your home or your office? Or somewhere else? How did that work for you?

 

Did you experience any technical difficulties during the exam? How and how fast were they resolved? Did you use the widget to contact the invigilator? 

 

Please be reminded that, if you wish to lodge a complaint pursuant to point I.8. of the Instructions to Candidates concerning the conduct of the examination , you must do so at the latest by the end of the day on which the paper concerned takes place, by filling in the dedicated form on the EQE website. The Form for paper B is (only) available on 18.03.2025, 13:00 - 23:59, CET.

The paper and our answers

 

We aim to post the core our (provisional) answer shortly after the exam in a separate blog post, as soon as possible after we have received a copy of the paper, preferably in all three languages. Should you have a copy, please send it to any of our tutors or to training@deltapatents.com.

Please be reminded that you can view and print/download  copy of your exam answer after the exam, via the eye below the "1. Paper"-icon in the bottom left part of the flow window of the respective flow. (It may not be available immediately after the official end of the (part of the) paper, but only 30-60 minutes later.) Apart from the pre-printable parts, the paper itself cannot be downloaded (unless you copied it in full into your exam answer).

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 18-03-2025 14:14"), 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!

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 Our paper B 2025 blog will open for comments after the exam (18 March 2025, 13:00)

Good luck with paper B!

Our EQE blogs will be open for your comments and opinions w.r.t. papers D, A, B, C and F shortly after the respective exams. We aim to post our (provisional) answers to the various papers shortly after we have received a copy of the respective exam paper.

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.,  EQE website, MyEQE, and the emails from the EQE secretariat).

All candidates, as well as tutors who helped candidates prepare for EQE 2025, 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’t comment to this blog post; comments will be accepted from a new blog post as of 13:00.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024 Our attempt at Paper B 2024 - Biodegradable face mask

Difficult. This would be one word to describe this year's Paper B. Judging from the comments on our ‘first impressions’ blog post, many would still consider it an understatement. 

The difficulty stems at least from the length of the paper.  There were 30 pages and 5400+ words (English version) compared to 21 pages and 4200+ words of the 2023 paper.  The theme was also very chemistry-related. We as non-chemists felt that candidates with specialist knowledge in this domain may have had an advantage in sorting out the patentability situation. Further adding to the difficulty was the fact that there were 11 claims in total including two independent claims (which in itself is not unusual, but adds to the complexity) and some legal issues relating to post filed evidence.

Unusually, the paper does not caution against adding additional dependent claims, which was the norm in recent papers. Is this to be understood as an invitation to add further dependent claims? Probably not, but explicit guidance in the paper would have been helpful. 

Below is our attempt in broad outlines (with in particular the letter not being fully worked out).

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.

Edit: changed title from "our solution" to "our attempt" since we found that this year's paper offers limited guidance on identifying the optimal solution among various alternatives (including those which are mentioned in the comments to this and the 'impressions' blog post).

Nico, Sander

Tuesday, March 12, 2024 B 2024: 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?

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 2021, 2022 and/or 2023 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?

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?

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?

Tuesday, March 12, 2024 Our paper B blog will open for comments after the end of the exam, 12 March 2023, 13:00 Good luck with paper B!

 Good luck with paper B!

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.

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.,  EQE website, MyEQE, and the emails from the EQE secretariat).

All candidates, as well as tutors who helped candidates prepare for EQE 2024, 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

Monday, August 14, 2023 EQE 2024 exam schedule now available: Paper B

The "Information on the schedule for the EQE 2024 examination papers" (dated 27 July 2023) is now available on the EQE website. 

The EQE 2024 will take place online using the examination software Wiseflow, with substantially the same setup as the e-EQE/Online EQE of 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Paper B lasts 3.5 hours (9:30 - 13:00 CET).

Candidates will be allowed to print the prior-art documents and the drawing(s), but none of the following: the description and claims of the application, the EPO communication, the client's letter and the amended claims. The documents allowed for printing will be made available at the latest ten minutes before the start of the examination.

(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.