Our attempt at e-EQE Paper C 2023 - Road racing pedal

Here's our attempt at this year's paper C. This year's paper concerned pedals for bicycles comprising sensors to help cyclist to optimize their pedaling. 

A good chunk of the paper was quite mechanical requiting candidates to argue about the components of chain drives, but on the other hand a quite complicated ranges puzzles was also presented. The first part was clearly more work than the second part. 

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.

Joeri, Jelle, Nico, Sander

C 2023: 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 and 2022, e.g., was also 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?

Our Paper C 2023 blog will open for comments after the end of the exam

Good luck with paper C 2023!

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 16:15

EQE 2023 exam schedule now available: Paper C

The "Information on the schedule for the EQE 2023 examination papers" is now available on the EQE website. 

The EQE 2023 will take place online using the same setup as the EQE of 2021 and 2022.

Paper C will have the same syllabus and character as before, but it will 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.

Paper C 2022 (Part 1 and Part 2) - EPO scores with accessible paper

The theme of this year's paper was football. Specifically, the electronic detection of goals.  

This was the second year with the online electronic paper C. Like last year, you were provided with all of the prior art in the first half, but not with all of A1's description. Last year the claims were split down the middle, with 3 claims in each half; this year the first half had 2 claims and the second half had 4 claims. 

Some felt that last year's claim split was not ideal, as most of the analysis is done in the first half. This year with one claim less to do, there was enough time to read everything. 

The application did not claim priority; thus the effective date section was straightforward. But the list of evidence made up for it, and was more challenging, with a lot of admissibility issues: A2 was a newsletter for which you would have to argue that it was available in time. A3 was clearly too late, but contained lots of information about past prior art.  A4 referred to a conference, but with the twist that the slides of the talk were provided to the participants. A5 was regular prior art and A6 a 54(3). 

Paper C Online EQE 2022: 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?

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 2013 - 2021?

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 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?

Paper C 2022 blog will open after the end of the exam, 17 March 2022 16:15

Good luck with paper C!

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. 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 2022, 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