Tuesday, March 05, 2024 D1 2024: a 14-mark question to start with!

One of us sat the D paper today as a benchmarker and made some notes on the D1 paper that we share below. Note that these are just a few brief notes, and have not been reviewed yet by colleague tutor. We will post more extensive answers later, after our internal review. 

Today's D1 was again worth a total of 55 marks, distributed over 2 parts with a 30 minute break in between:

• D1-1 had only 2 questions, for a total of 26 marks, and had to be done from 9:30-11:05. 
• D1-2 also had 3 questions, for a total of 29 marks, and had to be done from 11:35-13:20.

Thursday, March 14, 2019 As of 2020 the distribution of points for parts I and II may vary

The Examination Board has posted a notice (dated 13.03.2019) with the following text on the EQE website (emphasis added):

Notice from the Examination Board of the European qualifying examination (EQE) 

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

As of 2020 the distribution of points for parts I and II may vary between 60:40 and 40:60 for Paper D. 

How the points are to be distributed will not be announced before the examination. 

As always, the distribution of marks will be indicated on the examination paper.

For the Examination Board 
The Chairman 
Jakob Kofoed

This was already announced at the Tutor's Meeting on 18 October 2018 and in epi Information 4/2018 (page 25) - see our earlier blog post (here), which also briefly addresses the background behind this decision.

NB: D 2020 will be on 17 March 2020 (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]

Tuesday, November 28, 2017 Calendar for Paper D 2018 available on EPO website

The calendars for Paper D 2018 have been made available by the Exam Secretariat on the Paper D Compendium pages of the EPO website. Calendars are provided of 2016, 2017 and 2018. The format of the calendars and the table with EPO closure dates has remained unchanged.

The calendars can be found here.

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

Wednesday, March 25, 2015 Training for EQE 2016

A brief overview of our training offers for EQE 2016 is given in this other blog.

Details can be found on our website ("training" and "webshop")

Hope to see you in once of our courses!

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.