Wednesday, March 15, 2023 Our attempt at e-EQE Paper B 2023 - Strips for testing blood sugar

Here's our attempt at this year's paper B. This year's paper concerned strips for testing blood sugar levels and devices that use them. The paper was not very mechanical, with the main feature for claim 1 being a range. Some hard decisions were expected from the candidates regarding the novelty of the claims in light of a 54(3) document. 

You can find our solution by clicking on "Read more" below.

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 15-03-2023 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.

Tuesday, March 14, 2023 B 2023: 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 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 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 14, 2023 Our paper B blog will open for comments after the end of the exam, 14 March 2023, 13:00

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. We will post our (provisional) answers to the various papers shortly after the exam. 

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 homepage, EQE notices, EQE online website, MyEQE, and the emails from the EQE secretariat).

All candidates, as well as tutors who helped candidates prepare for EQE 2023, 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