Tuesday, March 02, 2021 D 2021 - The DII part

OH-NO, AHHH, YELP: subject-matter of this year’s DII! And how to keep your dogs on the leash.

Tuesday, March 02, 2021 D 2021 - the DI parts

This year's DI came in two parts of 90 minutes each. The DI had a well-balanced mixture of EPC and PCT questions, with common topics as well as some less familiar topics. 

Tuesday, March 02, 2021 Paper D e-EQE 2021: first impressions?

[Update 3 March 2021, 15h30:]

Breaking news 3 March 2021: 

The message below has just been published on the e-EQE website (here):

-------

[Original post:]

To all who sat the D-paper today:

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

This was the first D-paper of which the DI:DII ratio was not 40:60 anymore; it was announced in December, when the "Information on the time schedule" was published, that it was 50:50. And even more specifically, that it was split into 3 parts with break in between the 3 parts: a first DI part of 25 marks, a second DI part of 25 marks and a DII part of 50 marks.

How did that change of 40:60 to 50:50 influence your preparation? 

How did the split of the paper into 3 parts influence your preparation? How did it effect your exam? How did you use the breaks? Could you forget about the finished part and free your mind for the next part in each break? Were the breaks no enough? Did you also take any unscheduled breaks?

What was the effect of doing it online? Of doing it typed rather than handwritten?

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 small part could be printed) rather than from paper? 

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

How did this year's D-paper compare to the earlier D papers of 2013 - 2019?

Was DI similar as to its subjects and difficulty as the last few years (on top of that it was longer)? 

Was DII similar as 2013-2017 & 2019 (on top of that it was shorter) or more like 2018 with a large legal case part of the DII?
Was the additional 15 minutes in each DI apart and the additional 30 minutes in the DII part sufficient to compensate for the restrictions caused by the fixed time schedule of 3 parts? 

Were the topics well balanced in the DI-part? Was the balance between EPC and PCT right for you? Any substantive topics in DI (e.g., was partial priority tested; were disclaimer tested)?

Which of the the DI Questions did you consider particularly difficult, and which relatively 'easy'?

Did you skip any DI-questions? If so, why (e.g., too difficult, allocating the time for another question, no time left)?

Were the legal issues in the DII-part well doable? Patentability? Difficult priority analysis? Non-standard claim formats? Business situation and relevance clear? Exploitation? 

Did, in your view, a single error in one of the legal issues or one of the patentability issues in DII have a big knock-on effect on the rest of the paper (the D papers of the last seven years were very well designed in this respect!)?

The paper and our answers

[Updated 04.03.2021 9:00:] We compiled a complete version of the D 2021 paper (both D1 parts, the DII part and the calendars): it is available here.  (We expect that they will be made available in all 3 official EPO languages on the EQE webpages, Compendium, D at the end of this week or next week). 

Our answers will be given in two separate blog posts: one for the DI-questions and another post for the DII-part. We will post our answers tomorrow morning (3 March), to first allow you to post your comments and question without being biased by our answers.

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 03-03-2021 03:03"), 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.

Please post your comments as to first impressions and general remarks to the D-paper as a whole, and to the two parts (DI and DII) as whole part to this blog.

Please post substantial questions to specific DI questions to our DI post and DII-related questions to our DII post. Thanks!

Tuesday, March 02, 2021 Paper D 2021 blog will open after the end of the exam, 2 March 2021 16:45

Good luck with paper D!

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 2021, 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 16:45