Wednesday, February 27, 2019 DII 2019: Shoe soles

The DII paper of 2019 related to shoe soles for running shoes. Your client is a German shoe manufacturer, FASTER, whose main markets are Germany and Austria. FASTER has its only factory in Germany. Its owner found out that all metal nanoparticles modify the foam structure of a shoe, thereby improving the energy storage of the shoe sole. The increase depends on the type of material (any metal, in particular copper; Silica) and on the size of the nanoparticles. Slightly more than a year ago, your client had filed several patent applications, EP-F1, EP-F3, EP-F2.
An Australian competitor, HIKE, is also active in the field of running shoes, and has its only factory in Austria. HIKE made several announcents of the internet, and has two patents: a national Austrian patent AT-H with a broad claim scope, and a European patent EP-H which has a problem with its translation (EP-H was originally filed by a Chinese company, LONGRUN, in Chinese, and the English translation has a major error in it).
There is also a Mr Furious, a former employee of tours, who sold information to HIKE when he was angry for not getting promoted.
In this paper, analysis of priority was a key topic, and partial priority was present very pronouncedly -as expected-. Mr Furious' acts are an evident abuse against your client, and gave the opportunity to file a new application for Silica nanoparticle soles.

Below we give our answer, with a quite complete discussion as to whether priority is valid or not, what all the prior art is, novelty, inventive step, provisional protection, full protection, etc.

(For DI, see here; for general impressions to D as a whole, see here).

Our answer:

Wednesday, February 27, 2019 DI 2019: Entitlement, third party observations, missing claims, priority, debit accounts

The DI part of the 2019 D paper again had a variety of topics. Scoring about 20 marks in 1,5 hours or 25 marks within 2 hours seems feasible for a well-prepared candidate. How many marks one can achieve does not only depend on the legal knowledge and familiarity with the material, but also depends strongly on the strategy chosen for the D paper as a whole, especially how much time a candidate allocated for DI (some may choose to use only 1,5 hours for DI to have 4 hours for DII), how many marks were targetted, and how the candidate planned to deal with and actually dealt with difficult questions (skip or struggle, impose time limit or continue until no more ideas, ...).

We want to emphasize that our answer is not a typical answer of a candidate sitting the exam. It is the combined or at least cross-checked answer of experienced tutors. But even experienced tutors are not flawless, so our answer may not be fully complete, or even wrong as to certain aspects. We welcome any comments!

Our answers to the DI-part of the 2019 paper are given below:

(For DII, see here; for general impressions to D as a whole, see here).

Friday, October 19, 2018 Changes to be expected for D 2020 and later

At yesterday's Tutor’s meeting in Munich, the D committee indicated that there are no big changes to be expected for D 2019 compared to the papers of the last years. As before, the D paper will be a 5 hour + 30 minutes paper. The D paper is a single paper with a DI part (legal questions – to test legal knowledge) and a DII part (legal assessment – to test ability to implement the knowledge), as described in Rule 26 IPREE. The committee indicated that it can be expected that D 2019 will have, as before,  about 40% DI and 60% DII.

However, no specific ratio is indicated in Rule 26 IPREE and both parts are equally important. The D committee indicated that after 2019, there will still be ONE Paper D, but the ratio between DI and DII may vary: “any reasonable variation (e.g., between 40:60 – 60:40) should be expected”.

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Update 18 December 2018:

In epi Information 4/2018 (page 25), T. Rijns published the following annoucement:

[begin citation]

Announcement on the EQE - Paper D

T. Reijns

Article 1(4) REE and Rule 26(1) IPREE specify that the purpose of Paper D is "to assess candidates' ability to answer legal questions and to draft legal assessments".

Over the last 4 years we have noticed a decline in the quality of candidates' answers to the legal questions in Paper D. The candidates appear to be less well prepared on the legal documentation in the syllabus. It also appears that candidates focus more on the preparation for the legal assessment part (part 2) of Paper D than the legal questions (part 1).

With the formal merger of the two parts of Paper D into a single exam some years ago, candidates have shifted their focus to the legal assessment and moved to answering the legal questions only in the time they have left after completing the legal assessment. This in itself is a way of time management that is allowed and could be a good strategy for some candidates.

What is not desired is when candidates do not prepare for the legal questions enough and focus only on the legal assessment. Fifteen years ago, more emphasis was given to the legal assessment by changing from a 50:50 point distribution to 40:60, because candidates at that time put most of their effort on answering the legal questions and gave little attention to the legal assessment. We have now reached the other extreme.

In order to be considered "fit for practice", candidates must know the law and be able to apply it. Only being able to do one of these, is not enough.

For this reason, the point distribution between the legal questions and the legal assessment will be floating with a variation between 60:40 to 40:60 from EQE 2020 onwards.

Since the purpose of the floating point distribution is to encourage candidates to prepare well for both parts of Paper D, the distribution will not be announced before the date of the exam. Of course, the point distribution will be clearly indicated on the exam papers.

[end citation]

Wednesday, February 28, 2018 DII 2018: Oliebollen - methods and appartuses

In the DII 2018, the client is a Bollebozen B.V. (BB) who is active in the food industry, both in the manufacture and design of processes and processing equipment and in the large-scale production of processed food. One of thei products is a Ducth speciality, called "Oliebollen", which are consumed at the turn of the year. They conwist of a ball of dough mixed with dried fruit, which is fried. One concern with all fried products is that they have high levels of acrylamide, a substance some studies have indicated is carcinogenic in high doses. ([001])
The client has a granted P patent that is in opposition appeal, 3 filed applications -3 EP and 1 PCT-, as well as the intention to file another PCT. A research institute offered the client a EP phase of a PCT application, which they will offer to one of the client's competitors if your client doesnot buy it. Some applications are deemed to be withdrawn because of lack of payment of fees. The PCT applications are still very early in the international phase. Some applications/patent claim priority, others donot (yet). Issues relate to genus-species with nozzle-conical nozzle-trumpet shaped nozzle, novelty of ranges and of amended (sub-)ranges, essential features, potential Art.54(3) effects, unclaimed subject-matter.
So far for the "usual" parts (even though the answer will be quite surprising). In addition to the above, the DII started with a challenging DI-like case: appeal in opposition, where the proprietor merely referred to first instance submissions than filing a complete statement of grounds, The opponent filed test results with the appeal to demonsytrate that also the patent as maintained in amended form had an insufficiency problem. Such highly legal topics have not really been part of the DII part anymore since the D-paper is a single 5-hour paper (with 30 minites additional time since last year).

Below we give our answer. We do not give a full analysis, but summarize the conclusions of all questions below. A full answer needs full discussion as to whether priority is valid or not, what all the prior art is, novelty, inventive step, provisional protection, full protection, etc.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018 DI 2018: our answers

The DI part of this year's D had a variety of topics. Scoring about 20 to 25 marks within 2 hours seems feasible for a well-prepared candidate. How many marks one can achieve does not only depend on the legal knowledge and familiarity with the material, but also depends strongly on the strategy chosen for the D paper as a whole, especially how much time a candidate allocated for DI (some may choose to use only 1,5 hours for DI to have 4 hours for DII), how many marks were targetted, and how the candidate planned to deal with and actually dealt with difficult questions (skip or struggle, impose time limit or continue until no more ideas, ...).

We want to emphasize that our answer is not a typical answer of a candidate sitting the exam. It is the combined or at least cross-checked answer of experienced tutors, that could literally (not) sleep overnight to reconsider the answers before posting them. But even experienced tutors are not flawless, so our answer may not be fully complete, or even wrong as to certain aspects. We welcome any comments!

The outline of our answers to the DI-part of the 2018 paper:

Tuesday, February 27, 2018 D 2018: first impressions?

To all who sat the D-paper today:

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

Were the topics well balanced in the DI-part?

Was the balance between EPC and PCT right for you? Substantive topics in DI?

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

Did you skip any DI-questions? if so, why? Too difficult, or allocating the time for another question?

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

Did errors with 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 in your view (the D papers of the last four years were very well designed in this respect!)?

How much time did you allocate for DI, how much for DII?

Which part did you do first, DI or DII?

How many marks do you expect to have scored in the DI-part, in the DII-part, and for the whole D?
What is your expectation of the pass rate and the average score?

How did this year's D-paper compare to the D papers of 2013 - 2017 (assuming your practiced those) - DI and DII-wise?

How did you use the additional 30 minutes that were available to to the paper? Did you work longer on the DI or on the DII? How many marks do you expect to have scored extra thanks to those 30 minutes?

The paper and our answers

The D paper is available here in English, ici in French and hier in German. (Thanks for the candidates that provided us with a clean copy!)

The core of our answers will be given in two separate blog posts: one for the DI-questions and another post for the DII-part.

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!

Wednesday, March 08, 2017 DII 2017: metal beams having projections formed by rolling processes - our answers

How difficult was this DII? Opinions differ whether this was quite a standard DII in style and difficulty level, or whether it was much more evolved than in 2014-2016...  Again several PCTs that become, or not, Art.54(3) against others. Also non-published applications, deemed to be withdrawn applications, one grant, and one R.71(3) for which the time limit was missed. Again an application from which you can still claim priority and a competitor in China where you do not have any applications yet, so a need to file a PCT claiming priority from an earlier application to get something against your Chinese competitor. One may have been tempted to do entitlement to the ST-EP2 part of CB-PCT, but as that part is novelty-destroyed by ST-EP2 (or rather, the new application claiming priority from that), there is no need and no use. And product-by-process claims as well as product-directly-obtained-from-the-process protection. Also a transfer of an application and a priority right, supplementing the transfer of a granted patent and the transfer of an opposition in DI. Further difficulties to handle: quite a lot of claims to deal with, and priority was not valid for all claims in each application;  inventions were longer phrases written as product by process, making it more difficult to compare; there was also disclosures & application for a process; a lot of the issues were not straightforward when you looked in detail - e.g. trade fair had demonstration + test results + video; a lot of possible options to consider before you get to end - not possible to clear all of them up with certainty.

Tuesday, March 07, 2017 D 2017: first impressions?

To all who sat the D-paper today:

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

Were the topics well balanced in the DI-part?

Was the balance between EPC and PCT right for you? Substantive topics in DI?

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

Did you skip any DI-questions? if so, why? Too difficult, or allocating the time for another question?

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

Did errors with 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 in your view (the D papers of the last four years were very well designed in this respect!)?

How much time did you allocate for DI, how much for DII?

Which part did you do first, DI or DII?

How many marks do you expect to have scored in the DI-part, in the DII-part, and for the whole D?
What is your expectation of the pass rate and the average score?

How did this year's D-paper compare to the D2013, D2014, D2015 and D 2016 (assuming your practiced those) - DI and DII-wise?

How did you use the extra 30 minutes that were available? Did you work longer on the DI or on the DII? How many marks do you expect to have scored extra thanks to those 30 minutes?

The paper and our answers

Copies of the D-paper will be provided on this blog as soon as we have received copies of the papers, in all three languages here (English, French and German).

The core of our answers is given in two separate blog posts: one for the DI-questions and another post for the DII-part.

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!

Friday, January 20, 2017 Preparing for D 2017

The Guidelines for Examination are an important source of information for answering legal questions in the D-paper, as they document the EPO practice and application of EPC Articles, Rules, Decisions and Notices.

The Guidelines of 1 November 2016 are the relevant version for EQE 2017. It incorporates for example electronic notification (E-I, 2.4; OJ 2015, A17; OJ 2015, A36), and the amended PACE regime (E-VII, 4; OJ 2015, A93).

Note however that not all OJ publications from before 1 November are incorporated in the Guidelines of November 2016, even though the date given on the Guidelines cover page suggests they are. Thus, some parts do not correctly reflect the legal situation on 1 November (nor on 31 December). 

Not incorporated are for example:

• new RFees 11, full or partial refund of the examination fee: conditions and amounts have changed per 1 July 2016 - see OJ 2016, A48 and A49 (old version in GL (2016) A-VI, 2.5)
  
• Spain was added to the exemptions of the utilization scheme (R.141(2) EPC) per 1 June – OJ 2016, A18 & A19 (missing in GL (2016) A-III, 6.12)
  
• the streamlined opposition procedure per 1 July 2016 - OJ 2016, A42 and A43 (GL (2016) Part D)

Although it is unlikely that an EQE 2017 question could be designed for these recent changes, the changes may have an effect on the answer: application of the applicable legal provisions and notices may give another answer than the incorrect answer that would be derived from the Guidelines. We recommend to annotate your paper copy of the Guidelines with the correct information.

Thursday, March 03, 2016 D 2016 - our answer to the DII part

Our answer to the DII-part of the D2016 is given below.
Our answer to the DI-part is available in a separate post"D 2016 - our answers to the DI-part".
First impressions to the paper are given in another thread "First impressions D2016?".
We will post copies of the paper as soon as we received a clean copy (English, French and German).
All blogs allow anyone to add comments and already have a lot of valuable, interesting and sometimes surprising discussions between many candidates who posted their comments as well as tutors resulted from those.

Any remarks, (different) opinions and questions about our answer are welcome! Please post your contribution as comments to this blog, so everybody can participate in and benefit from the discussion/ explanation.
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 27-02-2015 23:49"), whereas using your real name or alternatively a pseudonym (nick-name) is more personal, more interesting and makes a more attractive conversation.

Comments are welcome in any official EPO language, not just English. So, comments in German and French are also very welcome!

Be reminded that the task in DII is to advise the client how to build and use a patent portfolio to support his business and to advise the client how to deal with third party’s rights that may prevent him from doing his business. It is thus not sufficient to only use legal patent terms (prosecute, infringe, within scope): you need use real life words that a real life client can understand (you will have protection for R, so you can stop your competitor from making/selling/using/importing ... in FR; your competitor has protection for S, so you can be stopped from producing ... in CZ). In DII you have to -and can- fully concentrate on giving an adequate advice without being disturbed by looking up and citing legal basis.

Where we give legal basis, this is for information only or to briefly explain a legal concept - legal basis is not required in the DII-part for points, but you can use it to clearly explain your answer to the marker. For example, it is a lot easier to label something an Art.54(3) application than to explain it.

Click "Read more" to read our answer,

Roel, Pete, Jelle

Wednesday, March 02, 2016 D 2016 - our answers to the DI-part

Our answer to the DI-part of the D 2016 is given below.
Our answer to the DII-part is available in a separate post"D 2016 - our answers to the DII-part".
First impressions to the paper are given in another thread "First impressions D2016?".

We will post copies of the paper as soon as we received a clean copy (English, French and German).
All blog threads allow anyone to add comments and already have a lot of valuable, interesting and sometimes surprising discussions between many candidates who posted their comments as well as tutors resulted from those.Any remarks, (different) opinions and questions as are welcome! Please post your contribution as comments to this blog, so everybody can paticipate in and benefit from the discussion/ explanation.
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 02-03-2016 14:56"), whereas using your real name or even a pseudonym (nick-name) is more personal, more interesting and makes a more attractive conversation.
Be reminded that the task in DI is to show to the Exam Committee that you understand the law and can apply the law. The law tested is the EPC, the PCT, the Paris Convention, decisions and opinions of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (G-decisions as well as R-decisions on petitions for review), established case law of the Technical and Legal Boards of Appeal (T- and J-decisions), a general knowledge of the national laws of the EPC Contracting States "to the extent that they apply to European patent applications and European patents" and of the US and Japan.

Hereto, you need to give an answer supported by step-by-step reasoning, citing specific legal provisions or other reference, such as an OJ EPO publication.

Click "Read more" to read our answer,
Roel, Pete, Jelle & Gregory

Tuesday, March 01, 2016 First impressions D 2016?

To all who sat the D-paper today:

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

Were the topics well balanced in the DI-part?

Was the balance between EPC and PCT right for you? Substantive topics in DI?

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

Did you skip any DI-questions? if so, why? Too difficult, or allocating the time for another question?

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

Did errors with 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 in your view (the D papers of the last three years were very well designed in this respect!)?

How much time did you allocate for DI, how much for DII?

Which part did you do first, DI or DII?

How many marks do you expect to have scored in the DI-part, in the DII-part, and for the wholeWhat is your expectation of the pass rate and the average score?

How did this year's D-paper compare to the D2013, D2014 and D2015 (assuming your practiced those) - DI and DII-wise?

The paper and our answers

Copies of the D-paper will be provided on this blog as soon as we have received copies of the papers, in all three languages here (English [available]], French and German).

The core of our answers will be given as soon as possible in two separate blog posts: one for the DI-questions and another post for the DII-part.

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 03-03-2015 03:03"), 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 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!

Roel, Pete, Jelle, Gregory, Heide

Friday, July 17, 2015 Examiner's Report Paper D EQE 2015 available

The Examiner's Report for Paper D of EQE 2015 is available on the EQE Paper D Compendium webpage.

At this moment (17 July; still on 25 Aug), it is only available in English, and the webpages indicate that translations into French and German are in preparation.
Candidate's Answers are available in all three languages (25 August).

The Examiner's report gives "possible answers" for all legal questions (DI) as well as the questions of the legal advice part (DII). We refer to the Examiner's Report for the possible answers. Discussion on this blog is appreciated. 
Our answers, posted in the first few days after the EQE on this blog, can be found as "Our answer to the DI-part of D 2015"  and  "Our answer to the DII-part of D 2015", as well as "D2015: First impressions?" and "D 2015 results for various types of candidates".

The Examiner's report also makes some general and specific remarks, which we repeat below. We invite all candidates and tutors to post their comments.

Tuesday, July 07, 2015 D 2015 results for various types of candidates

The D paper of 2015 was taken by candidates that never sat any Pre-Exam ("from the old system"), and candidates that passed one of the Pre-Exam in 2012, 2013 or 2014 (the latter possibly after a correction of the results for statement 10.4 after successful appeals).

It gives the following numbers:

D 2015	Pre 2014	Never Pre	All non-0
#sitting D (non-zero)	428	325	985
#passes D	322	110	554
#passes+comp fail D	353	151	667
#compfail D	31	325	113
#fail D (non-zero)	75	174	318
#fail D (zero)	8	27	44
#passes D	75%	34%	56%
#passes+comp fail D	82%	46%	68%
#compfail D	7%	100%	11%
#fail D (non-zero)	18%	54%	32%

Thus, of all 985 candidates that sat paper D in 2015, 428 passed the Pre-Exam in 2014 - this group had a pass rate of 75%, whereas 325 candidates from the old system has a poor pass rate of only 34%.

(The remaining 985-428-325=232 candidates that passed Pre-Exam 2012 or Pre-Exam 2013 and sat Paper D fir the first time, or -a few of them- sat paper D for the second time)

Any comments are welcome.

Roel, 7 July 2015

Thursday, February 26, 2015 Our answers to the DI-part of D 2015 (repost)

Our answer to the DI-part of the D 2015 is given below.
Our answer to the DII-part can be found in a separate thread "Our answer to the DII-part of D 2015".
First impressions to the paper are given in another thread "D2015: First impressions?".
Copies of the paper: English, French and German versions from EQE Compendium.
All blog threads allow anyone to add comments and already have a lot of valuable, interesting and sometimes surprising discussions between many candidates who posted their comments as well as tutors resulted from those.Any remarks, (different) opinions and questions as are welcome! Please post your contribution as comments to this blog, so everybody can paticipate in and benefit from the discussion/ explanation.

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 24-02-2014 17:54"), whereas using your real name or even a pseudonym (nick-name) is more personal, more interesting and makes a more attractive conversation.

Be reminded that the task in DI is to show to the Exam Committee that you understand the law and can apply the law. The law tested is the EPC, the PCT, the Paris Convention, decisions and opinions of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (G-decisions as well as R-decisions on petitions for review), landmark decisions of the Technical and Legal Boards of Appeal (T- and J-decisions), a general knowledge of the national laws of the EPC Contracting States "to the extend that they apply to European patent applications and European patents" and of the US and Japan.
Hereto, you need to give an answer supported by an explicit, step-by-step reasoning, wherein each step cites one or more specific legal provision or other reference, such as an OJ EPO publication.

Click "Read more" to read our answer,

Roel, Jelle & Pete

Note: this is a repost - somehow during the editing of the answers yesterday (25 Feb), the whole thread got lost with all the comments. Sorry for any inconvenience.
The answers from yesterday have now been trimmed down in line with our DI methodology, and based on the comments posted to yesterday's answers.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Our answer to the DII-part of D 2015

Our answer to the DII-part of the D2015 is given below.
Our answer to the DI-part will be made available in a separate post"Our answer to the DI-part of D 2015".
First impressions to the paper are given in another thread "D2015: First impressions?".
Copies of the paper: English, French and German versions from EQE Compendium.
All blogs allow anyone to add comments and already have a lot of valuable, interesting and sometimes surprising discussions between many candidates who posted their comments as well as tutors resulted from those.

Any remarks, (different) opinions and questions about our answer are welcome! Please post your contribution as comments to this blog, so everybody can participate in and benefit from the discussion/ explanation.
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 27-02-2015 23:49"), whereas using your real name or alternatively a pseudonym (nick-name) is more personal, more interesting and makes a more attractive conversation.

Comments are welcome in any official EPO language, not just English. So, comments in German and French are also very welcome!

Be reminded that the task in DII is to advise the client how to build and use a patent portfolio to support his business and to advise the client how to deal with third party’s rights that may prevent him from doing his business. It is thus not sufficient to only use legal patent terms (prosecute, infringe, within scope): you need use real life words that a real life client can understand (you will have protection for R, so you can stop your competitor from making/selling/using/importing ... in FR; your competitor has protection for S, so you can be stopped from producing ... in CZ). In DII you have to -and can- fully concentrate on giving an adequate advice without being disturbed by looking up and citing legal basis.

Where we give legal basis, this is for information only - legal basis is not required in the DII-part.

Click "Read more" to read our answer,

Roel, Pete, Jelle

Tuesday, February 24, 2015 D 2015: first impressions?

To all who sat the D-paper today:

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

Were the topics well balanced in the DI-part?

Was the balance between EPC and PCT right for you?
Which of the the DI Questions did you consider particularly difficult, and which relatively 'easy'?

Did you skip any DI-questions? if so, why? Too difficult, or allocating the time for another question?

Were the legal issues in the DII-part well doable?
Did errors with 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 in your view (D2013 and D2014 were very well designed in this respect!)?

How much time did you allocate for DI, how much for DII?
Which part did you do first, DI or DII?
How many marks do you expect to have scored in the DI-part, in the DII-part, and for the whole
What is your expectation of the pass rate and the average score?

 paper?
How did this year's D-paper compare to the D2013 and the D2014 (assuming your practiced those) - DI and DII-wise?

The paper and our answers

Copies of the D-paper are here (English, French and German if available).

The core of our answers are here: DI-questions and the DII-part.

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 27-02-2014 17:54"), 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 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 the DI thread "and DII-related questions to the DII thread. Thanks!

Roel, Pete, Jelle

Tuesday, March 05, 2013 Paper D EQE 2013 – Impressions

This year’s paper D was the first single-paper version. Whereas the last few years, the D-paper had a 3-hour DI-part for for 40 marks in the morning and  a 4-hour DII-part in the afternoon for 60 marks, with a lunch break in between.

What is your impression, especially if you sat the exam and now look back? How do you think it compared to earlier exams, and did the D-paper meet your expectations as to the level of difficulty, time management and format?

  

For our impressions, please read further.

Jelle, Roel

Thursday, February 28, 2013 DI questions EQE 2013

First impression: some do-able and some really nasty questions. Such as an 8-mark PCT question: tthat will have frightened quite many candidates - we expect many candidates skipped the question without giving any attempt.

We have made a rough solution. Comments are welcome: please add them to the blog via the link below the blog.  If posting a comment, please donot use "anonymous" (you may be one of many), but use your name: you can enter a name without signing in (as one of you indicated).

We will underline updates that we will make based on your comments.

Jelle Hoekstra, Pete Pollard,  Roel van Woudenberg


Our answers (click "read more"):

Wednesday, February 27, 2013 Paper DII EQE 2013

First impression: a do-able paper. Lots of small issues, many of which could be dealt with separately. Quite a few, clear questions. The knock-on effect of missing an issue or wrongly dealing with an issue also seem better controlled.

I have made a rough solution. Here it is. Welcome comments. I made it fast and will use this as an excuse if there turn out to be errors/omissions :-).
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I will underline updates I will make based on your comments.

Jelle Hoekstra
with input from Roel van Woudenberg and Pete Pollard

Our answers (click "Read more")