Thursday, March 20, 2025 Our attempt - Paper C 2025 IR thermometer

 Paper C of 2025 discussed measuring body temperature using an IR sensor. The paper presented the candidates with several interesting legal and substantive issues. 

Part 1. F

Added matter

Claim 3 is an intermediate generalization of the examples presented in the application as filed. Claim 3 has an optional feature. 

The client wants us to attack 'a possible fallback'. The obvious fallback would claim 3 wherein the added matter feature is removed and the optional feature is now required. 

Effective dates

Claims 1, 2, and amended claim 3 get the priority date.

List of evidence

A2, A3, and A5 are art. 54(2) prior art for claims 1, 2, and amended claim 3

A4 is 54(3) prior art for claims 1, 2, and amended claim 3

Thursday, March 20, 2025 C 2025: first impressions?

To all who sat the C-paper today:

What are your first impressions with respect to this year's C-paper? Any general or specific comments?

 

How did you handle the situation with the paper being split into two parts? Was the split different than in in recent previous papers?

 

Was all prior art given with the first part needed in the first part? Was new prior art introduced in the second part? 

 

What was the effect of the paper being split into two parts? How did you use the break?

 

How did this year's C-paper compare to the C papers of the last few years? Or harder/easier? Any pleasant and/or unpleasant surprises?

 

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 C is (only) available on 20.03.2025, 16:15 - 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 20-03-2025 15:03"), whereas using your real name or a pseudonym 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!

Thursday, March 20, 2025 Our Paper C 2025 blog will open for comments after the exam (20 March 2025, 16:15)

Good luck with paper C 2025!

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 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 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 16:15

Friday, March 15, 2024 Our solution for Paper C 2024 - Wireless charging pad

The paper C of this year 2024 was about wireless charging of cars.

Our solution in short. Our full solution is after the break. 

Claim 1: 

              Added subject matter

              Lack of novelty over A2 (priority publication Art. 54(2), A2 Art. 54(3))

              Lack of inventive step over A3+A5

Claim 2:

              Lack of novelty over A2 (priority publication Art. 54(2), A2 Art. 54(3))

Claim 3:

              Lack of inventive step A2 Prio Pub. + A4

Claim 4: 

              Lack of novelty over A5

Claim 5:

              Lack of novelty over A7

              Lack of novelty over Model Q evidenced by A6

Claim 6:

              Lack of inventive step over A6 ‘Model P’ and A5

Claim 7:

              Lack of inventive step over A6 ‘Model P’ and A5, evidence provided by A7

 The effective dates section was a bit more complicated than in recent years, combining a first application issue with many 54(3) documents (2 in part one, 3 in part two). Complicating the date analysis was a request of the client to ensure fall back positions of claim 1 are attacked. Since claim 1 has two problems: a partial priority loss due to the first application issue, and added matter, candidates had to decide what the appropriate fallback should be.

We had some discussion on whether A5.4 (this notation also being used elsewhere and referring to A5 [4]) enables a novelty attack on claim 5. As the signal of the pressure sensors decides on the charging, it seems that all features are disclosed. A processing unit would be implicit as any unit that processes a signal may be called a processing unit. Nevertheless, this is attack seems too much of a stretch and was probably not the intention.

Claim 7 is another claim that we had some discussion about. The reference to pricing suggests that maybe an attack exploiting non-technicality might be possible. To follow this idea, one might take model Q as the closest prior art, and argue that it is already adapted to charge based on a signal. One would then argue that using a signal to represent pricing is a non-technical difference which may be ignored.

Unfortunately, this attack is not possible, since the model Q is not suited for wireless charging which is required by claim 7. The comments under A6 make clear that the model Q cannot be adapted to wireless charging either. This makes any line of attack against claim 7 starting from model Q impossible.

A second reservation we have about this argument, is that it is not altogether clear whether reference to price automatically makes a feature non-technical. Engineers are often charged with problems related to price, e.g., to make a device cheaper, and the solutions they find are typically technical. Also in this case, high energy price reflects a busy electrical network, so the feature of claim 7 contributes to reducing congestion on the electrical network.

The alternative option is to take model P as the closest prior art and focus on the RFC standard. This has the advantage that price related charging is actually disclosed, mooting a discussion about its technicality. This line of attack would require one to argue that it is implicit from A6 that model P is adapted to the RFC standard. We are not sure that A6 really clears this bar. Although model Q was the first model to have the standard, it might also have been the last—in other words, it is not inevitable that model P has the RFC standard. An alternative would be to accept that the standard is a distinguishing feature and introduce the standard via inventive step. This approach is also a bit dodgy since the obvious D2 document A7, is 54(3). The combining document would have to be the model Q. On balance we took the first approach, arguing that it is implicit that the model P has support for the standard.

Finally, we give our regards to Ms. Molly Dorsett Pauley. She must have quite a reputation as an opposition specialist after her successful oppositions in 2015 and 2021. 

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.

Sander, Nico, with feedback from Joeri

Thursday, March 14, 2024 C 2024: first impressions?

To all who sat the C-paper today:

What are your first impressions to this year's C-paper? Any general or specific comments?

How did you handle the situation with the paper being split into two parts? 

Was the split different than in 2021, 2022 and 2023?

Was all prior art given with the first part needed in the first part? Was new prior art introduced in the second part? 

What was the effect of the paper being split into two parts? 

How did you use the break?

How did this year's C-paper compare to the C papers of the last few years?

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 a  part could be printed) rather than from paper?

Did you experience any technical difficulties during the exam? How & how fast were they solved?

Any pleasant and/or unpleasant surprises?

Thursday, March 14, 2024 Our Paper C 2024 blog will open for comments after the end of the exam

 Good luck with paper C 2024!

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 aim to 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 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 16:15

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

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 C will again be split into two parts of 3 hours each. The first part is to be completed before the break, with the second part only becoming available after the break. It will not be possible to go back to the first part after the break. Paper C lasts six hours (9:30-12:30 + 13:15-16:15)

Candidates will be allowed to print everything except the claims of the patent in suit/opposed. The documents allowed for printing will be made available approximately ten minutes before the start of each part.

(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.