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).
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