Information on the enrolment for A, B, C and D papers at the EQEs 2025 and 2026 - effects of introduction of New EQE
Today, the Examination Secretariat published a Notice with information on the enrolment for the EQEs 2025 and 2026.
Today, the Examination Secretariat published a Notice with information on the enrolment for the EQEs 2025 and 2026.
We wish all candidates that will sit one or more EQE papers in the next two weeks good luck / bonne chance / gute Fahrt!
Our EQE blogs will be open for your comments and opinions w.r.t. papers A, B, C and D main exam and the Pre-Exam paper immediately after the respective exam. We aim to post our (provisional) answers to the various papers in separate blog posts shortly after we have received copies of the exam papers.The date for the first New EQE exam, Foundation 2025, has been announced today on the EQE website!
Foundation 2025 will be on Friday, 21.03.2025.
For our courses: see our EQE webpages (Foundation courses here)
Please feel invited to post your comments on our new Foundation blog (here).
This Thursday, 14 December 2023, the Administrative Council
of the EPO adopted, unanimously, the new "Regulation on the European
qualifying examination for professional representatives" (REE) for the New
EQE (CA/D 25/23). The Implementing
Regulations thereto are expected to be adapted by the
Supervisory Board of the EQE in the coming week(s). The new REE enters into
forms on 1 January 2025 and will supersede those of 2009. The new REE, together with the IPREE, contains details
transitional provisions.
EQE 2024 will still be conducted under the current
provisions, i.e., with a Pre-Exam and papers A, B, C and D.
The new papers of the New EQE will be gradually introduced as
of 2025 (Art. 27 REE):
- a new Foundation paper in 2025,
- new Main exam papers M1 and M2 in 2026, and
- new Main exam papers M3 and M4 in 2027.
The EQEs of 2025 and 2026 will also still comprise the
current A, B, C and D papers for those candidates eligible for those papers and
wanting to take those (unless they have already enrolled for a New EQE paper,
in which case they need to continue in the New EQE system).
For the current EQE, sitting the Pre-Exam requires a 2-year full-time
supervised training period for patent attorney trainees (" including taking part in a wide range of activities pertaining to European patent applications or European patents") and 3 years for EPO examiners,
and sitting the A, B, C and D papers requires 3-year full-time supervised
training for patent attorney trainees and 4 yrs for examiners.
For the New EQE,
the required training periods are the same for patent attorney trainees and for
EPO examiners (Art. 11 REE):
- the new Foundation paper requires at least 1 yr of full-time supervised
training,
- the new Main exam papers M1 and M2 requires 2 yrs of full-time supervised
training, and
- the new Main exam papers M3 and M4 requires 3 yrs of full-time supervised
training.
Yesterday, the Examination Board published a notice "EQE 2024: Publication of results" on the EQE website reading:
The dates for EQE 2025 have been published on the EQE website (notice of 20 July 2023):
The time schedule is similar as that of EQE 2024 and 2023, with the papers in the sequence D-A-B-C-Pre-Exam, and again showing at least one day in between successive main exam papers. It seems likely that the exam will again use WiseFlow and -for the main exam- the FlowLock editor/browser.
The published schedule provides for papers Pre-Exam, A, B, C and D, so it seems to be an EQE of the current format.
The "Information on the schedule for the EQE 2024 examination papers" (dated 27 July 2023) is now available on the EQE website.
Please feel invited to post to our blogs for the respective papers if you wish to comment on the EQE 2024 schedule: