Tuesday, October 21, 2014 Changes to paper A and B as of 2017

A brief notice was posted on the EQE website earlier this month, summarizing a recent decision from the Supervisory Board:

With effect from 2017, a single Paper A and a single Paper B will be set each year. As for current Paper C and the Pre-Examination, Papers A and B will be set in technical fields that are accessible to everyone. 

Thus, as of 2017, there will no longer be two types of paper A and paper B (separate Paper A Electricity/Mechanics and Paper A Chemistry; separate Paper B Electricity/Mechanics and Paper B Chemistry).

On the Annual Meeting of EQE tutors and member of the EQE committees, the Examination Board indicated that a mock exam will be made available.

The 2015 and 2016 exams will still have separate Electricity/Mechanics and Chemistry versions for paper A and B.

Thursday, July 24, 2014 Examiners' Reports Main Exam 2014 available

The Examiners' Reports Main Exam 2014 are now available on the EPO's EQE Compendium webpages

Friday, July 18, 2014 Change of UK venue for EQE 2015

The Exam Secretariat published a notice on the EQE website that the UK-Intellectual Property Office has changed the venue for the European qualifying examination 2015, pre-examination as well as main examination.

Friday, July 11, 2014 EQE 2014 results available online - and some statistics

The EQE Main Exam 2014 results have been made available online this morning around 8:00 am - click here.

A first provisional analysis of the score distribution shows:
 

	#	average	fail	comp	pass	fail(%)	comp(%)	pass(%)
A	850	50.01	335	72	443	39.41	8.47	52.12
B	769	52.02	284	67	418	36.93	8.71	54.36
C	1080	40.83	605	114	361	56.02	10.56	33.43
D	1040	41.87	570	85	385	54.81	8.17	37.02

 
Of these, a zero-score was obtained by 8 candidates for A, 12 for B, 28 for C and 48 for D. These are candidates that did enroll but did not show up at the exam or did not hand in anything.

Score distributions for the different papers are:

wherein bins are 5 marks wide and the yellow bar indicates  the compensable fail region of 45-49 marls.

The pass rate for the candidates that sat all four papers in 2014 (457 candidates) is:

 

candidates	457
		%
pass (no compensation)	126	27.57
pass (with compensation)	49	10.72
pass (total)	175	38.29
fail	282	61.71
average	205.96
mean	212

When comparing the EQE pass rates (candidates sitting all four papers) with earlier years, this year's paper EQE compares reasonably well to the old-style EQEs of 2010 - 2012. The EQE of 2013 -the first one in the new format- had significantly higher pass rates.

According to the document, the official results letters will be dispatched as of 5 August 2014.

The Examiner's Reports for the various papers are not yet available - we assume these will be available as of 5 August 2014.

Good luck!

Joeri & Roel

Tuesday, March 04, 2014 Training for EQE 2015 - first courses start already on 31 March 2014

For candidates that sat the Pre-Exam 2014 or one or more main exam paper last week: congratulations: you survived! And hopefully, you passed the paper(s) that you sat.
For new sitters: welcome to the world of the EQE.

The EQE 2015 may seem to be quite far in the future, but your preparation should not start to long from now if you want to be well-prepared.

Below, we provide suggestions as to how to prepare for the EQE 2015 (Pre-Exam or main exam papers):

• if you plan to sit next year's Pre-Exam;
• if you passed the Pre-Exam but want/need further basic legal training;
• if you plan to sit next year's paper D;
• if you plan to sit one of the other main exam papers A, B and/or C

The first courses start on 31 March 2014!

Monday, March 03, 2014 EQE 2015-2017: dates, times and Regulations

The Exam Secretariat announced the dates and times of the exam papers of EQE 2015, 2016 and 2017:

EQE 2015: 23.02.2015 – 26.02.2015

EQE 2016: 29.02.2016 – 03.03.2016

EQE 2017: 06.03.2017 – 09.03.2017

Further, the EPO published a consolidated version of all EQE regulations in "Supplementary publication - Official Journal EPO 2/2014 - Regulation on the European qualifying examination for professional representatives".

Monday, March 03, 2014 DeltaPatents EQE blogs

DeltaPatents provides the following blogs for the various EQE Papers of EQE 2014:

• DeltaPatents EQE Pre-Exam blog with our solution and many comments from many candidates on the legal as well as the claims analysis parts;
• DeltaPatents EQE paper A E/M blog has a copy of the paper and our solution, open for discussion and comments!;
• DeltaPatents EQE paper B E/M blog shows our solution as well as comments from candidates to the amendments proposed by us and our argumentation in their support;
• DeltaPatents EQE paper A ch blog gives our independent claims and considerations that led to the proposed independent claims;
• DeltaPatents EQE paper B ch blog shows our set of amended claims and supporting arguments; 
• DeltaPatents EQE paper C blog indicates the main attacks and has quite extensive discussions with a large number of candidates;
• DeltaPatents EQE paper D blog  has with our answers to the DI-questions as well as our legal advice for DII, and interesting legal discussions with many candidates.

as well as blogs addressing other (European) patent related topics:

• Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court
• Patent Law

Please feel invited to join the discussions at our blogs!

And... do not forget to read the comment posted to this blog!!!