- It was shorter in length than last year, so that made it a little more manageable.
- There were many complaints about the exam being too mechanical - in fact, it looked like it was from years ago when candidates could choose between Electricity-Mechanics or Chemistry, where specialist knowledge was required to make the exam.
- I have not made the exam yet, so I cannot comment on it myself.
- If you had any issues with the exam, report them as soon as possible to helpdesk@eqe.org. Formally, complaints must be filed no later than midnight on the day of the exam you are complaining about. I have helped update Preston Richard's template for EQE complaints to make the process a little easier, especially after a tiring day. Even if you have miss the formal deadline, submit all complaints that could affect your marking or performance as quickly as possible. You can also give a reason why you were not able to submit immediately after the exam, such as tiredness or needing to prepare for the next exam.
1. Telegram chat groups
- Join the EQE Telegram groups to discuss issues with other candidates: Main group (306 members), Study group (128 members), ABC&PE-claims (188 members), D&PE-legal (152 members) and Marketplace (69 members). The groups are public, and open to any tutors or candidates. A few rules: treat others with respect, no discussion of cheating, no exchange of large sections of copyrighted materials (use of excerpts for study and discussion allowed). During scheduled exams, no discussion of the exam questions or answers. During mocks, no restrictions.
- It is now strongly recommended to log-on to WISEflow at least 60 minutes before the start of the first part of each exam. This gives you a chance to see if everything is working. After clicking on the correct exam flow, you enter the flow page.
- Early camera check: It is possible to start the FLOWlock/LockDown Browser in the flow page up to 60 minutes before the exam to test your camera and microphone by performing the ID check.
- If you do not need to print, you can just stay in the Browser, waiting for the exam to start.
- If you need to print using that computer, you must exit the Browser, restart your internet browser, log back in to WISEflow, and enter the flow page again. You will also need to perform the ID check again.
- It is also possible to print using a second computer logged into WISEflow, but this second computer must be turned off and out of reach during the exam.
- Print BEFORE starting the FLOWlock Browser: 10 minutes before the start of the exam, any printable documents will appear on the flow page. Click on the refresh icon (clockwise arrow) or press F5 to see them.
- All copies of candidates answers were available 60 mins after the scheduled end of the exam.
- Last year, there were some problems last year with missing pages in the pdf's, so check them to see if they look complete and report any problem. It was a pdf conversion issue, and the complete answers were correctly submitted and could be easily be reconverted. This year, at least one person had the first letters of each paragraph missing and some words in between were also missing.
3. FLOWlock / LockDown Browser
- Browser updates: it is now expected that you verify the software at least once in the morning BEFORE each exam. You should be using the latest version of FLOWlock / LockDown Browser
- To verify: after logging-in to WISEflow, click on the drop down menu next to your name and select "Edit profile" and "Test Browser". This will start the FLOWlock / LockDown Browser, and check that it is up to date.
- Several people did report Browser stability problems after updating - everything was fine during their mock exams in February.
- Browser crashes during A, B and D: many people had crashes, even with home computers on home networks who had no problems during the mocks. After successfully starting, the Browser spontaneously vanished, with just the desktop backdrop being visible. This issue was seen by some during the mocks. It is unclear what the cause is.
- if an internet browser can be opened, you can restart WISEflow.
- if no options are available, you may need to to reboot your computer, and then restart WISEflow.
- Prepare a backup system: I heard on Monday about someone who had no problems during the mocks, but could not get into any parts of the D exam yesterday because the Browser would not recognise the laptop internal camera (a personal laptop with no external cameras connected). What a disaster - a year of preparation flushed away by WISEflow. If you have had crashes, or you are worried, prepare a backup system and have it in your room, turned off and out of reach:
- Borrow a computer to which you can have full administrator privileges. The recommended technical specs are very low. Or ask your IT department if they have an old one that they can reset and give you administrator privileges.
- You will have the least chance of technical issues if you use a dedicated desktop with one screen (at least 27 inch), one camera, one microphone, one keyboard, one mouse, one loudspeaker device, one printer, direct wired (USB/HDMI) connections to all peripherals, administrator access, cabled (LAN) access. The chances of problems are even more reduced by connecting to a non-company network.
- Chat window frozen: many people found after a crash (and logging in again) that chat window remained open in the "Calling representative" or "Contacting invigilation" mode. There was no way to stop it, move it, or to contact an invigilator. This meant that it was not possible to request an unscheduled break, for example, or to report any other issues. At least one person had to waste more time calling the EQE helpdesk telephone number (which has very limited capacity) to get back in because the chat was frozen.
- helpdesk suggested refreshing - the refresh icon is the "clockwise arrow" at the top left between X and (i). F5 should also work (at least in Windows).
- if it still does not work, continue working on your exam. If you need to contact the helpdesk, call +49 89 2399 5155 (helpdesk number with very limited capacity).
- Lost lines from answer: after a FLOWlock Browser crash, rebooting and logging-in, one person reported that they were missing the lines from the last several minutes of thier had been lost, and they had to retype them.
- Can't find Refresh: Refresh will solve a lot of problems. The refresh icon is the "clockwise arrow" at the top left between X and (i). F5 should also work (at least in Windows).
- Blurry assignment preview: many candidates have reported this problem. The assignment preview window is the only possibility in FLOWlock to allow side-by-side comparison, so the blurriness makes this unusable. The official guidance received from the helpdesk, both during the mocks and during exams, is to not use the preview window, or that it was due to the individual system.
- a solution reported in the Telegram groups was to adjust the text zoom ratio in WINDOWS/ Display Settings to 125% before starting the FLOWlock Browser.
- Note that this WINDOWS setting cannot be set or reset during the exam.
- The zoom level of the FLOWlock Browser and all the tabs can be set during the exam using the selection menu which appears when the (i) icon in the top left is clicked. For example, if this Browser zoom is set to 75%, some people indicated that the blurry assignment preview did not return, and everything was sized correctly.
- It is also possible to separately change the zoom level of an assignment tab using CTRL+SCROLL MOUSE, or the (-) and (+) buttons in the assignment tab toolbar. Zoom settings can also be set directly by clicking on the arrow next to the percentage in the assignment tab toolbar.
- It is only possible to separately change the zoom level of the answer tab using CTRL+SCROLL MOUSE.
For some reason, my copy and pasting was not working properly at times. When copying via ctrl+c or using the copy function when it popped up on the screen and pasting into the answer sheet it kept pasting previous text that I had copied and not the current text that I had highlighted and selected to copy.
ReplyDeleteThis was frustrating and I spent some time manually typing the text. The solution was to close all tabs again and reopen them, frustrating as hell.
I really hope they developed their own software rather than using this unreliable 3rd party software. With all the money they are saving via online now, the EPO can well afford to develop their own software with no glitches.
What a mess! I know that LOCKdown Browser does clear the OS copy buffer (clipboard) when it starts (so that you cannot copy in external information. But it does not seem necessary to restrict it in any way during the exam.
DeleteI don't think they will develop their own system - there are several alternatives already.
I noticed that WISEflow is not mentioned explicitly in the EQE announcement for 2023 (it was in last years announcement), so they could be seriously considering to switch to something more suitable to EQE.
Hi Pete interesting re WISEflow not being mentioned for 2023. I hope they do change as the current system is more of a burden than anything tbh and adds to the stress levels. the copy and paste functionality issue was a new one for me this year, had no issues in the mocks or during last years exams/mocks. Really don't know what was wrong, it just kept pasting the legacy material from a previous copy and wouldn't copy and paste new text no matter how many times I tried to redo it. In the end, closed all tabs down and opened uo again and it worked...just so annoying having to deal with these niggling issues at a stressful time as it is already. Fingers crossed I won't have to deal with it next year again.
DeleteAlasdair Mackenzie (LinkedIn):
ReplyDeleteYes I thought it was very ‘engineering heavy’, and I’m an engineer…
Also had the blurry text issue, but just ended up closing the preview window, which did the trick.
Maria Luisa Iarossi (LinkedIN):
ReplyDeleteI wonder what is the point of making such 'engineering heavy' papers if in reality there is a category of patent attorneys specialized in chemistry or biotechnology.
It should be in the EPO's interest to have European patent attorney specialized in chemistry or biotechnology and it should not be worsen an already heavy situation for a chemical patent attorney who is faced with a mechanical paper every year.
Then at this point it would be more appropriate to go back to dividing the papers by category.
This year's paper B required specialized knowledge in the EM field for understanding the invention. For chemists abd biologist it was challenging to follow the inventive idea and understand what pulleys, slots and expanding elements do! I found myself lost in the details of drawings and spend most of my time trying to understand the technical sense of the whole contents. Is paper B still meant also for chemists and biologists and where will this end up? I mean is there a definition of what they mean by "technical content accessible to everybody"? Why is a whole category being tested for competencies they are not trained for? That s really so frustrating and worrying for the future of thisd exam for chemists!!! Why do we have to be penalized this year then? Somebody may have thought to give a little more time maybe? I hope the committee will take all of this into account while marking!!!
ReplyDeleteThey can take some things into account in the marking, but it does not help if people run out of time. I heard that a lot of non-native speakers were really struggling with the terminology, and had to look up a lot of words.
DeleteYou are also greatly handicapped with WISEflow by not having the description and claims as filed on paper to compare side-by-side with the prior art.
Pure mechanics is also a dying field in patents - it is hardly worth filing patent applications for them anymore. There is no barrier to copying world-wide after the application is published - it is all there in the drawings. And they are also often obsolete within a very short time as new materials become available.
No - there is no definition of "technical content accessible to everybody".
How are you supposed to prepare for B? You now need to prepare fully to do a 3.5 hour exam in any technical area.
Hi Pete, I read the comment above and was wondering if that's really a linguistic issue...in my personal case even after looking in the dictionary I was not sure how to contextualize their meaning. As result, identifying the relationship between features and effect ate up the 90% of my time.... Immagine candidates having to deal with a B presenting the same level of details and complexity in biology.... To make it even better the claims provided by the client needed to be complemented by other features (differently from the 2017-2019 format which were really more straightforward) so this year you really needed to understand their technical function! I have a seggestion: in my humble opinion the somebody could look closer into the statistics and successful candidates and see how many of them are from EM and how many of them are from CH, and accordingly adjust the content of future papers.
ReplyDeleteIt is both - you first need to figure out what the term would be in your own language, and then you have to try and figure out the technical concept represented by the correct word in your own language.
DeleteI think the number of candidates completely comfortable with this subject matter is a small percentage. Particularly after they moved to the combined papers, the tutors now advise candidates to not spend too much time on very mechanical past exams or the very chemical ones.
What will it be next year? - a dna sequence? a particle accelerator? an FET transistor?
They have completely changed the style of the B exam last year, and this seems the same. This is the much older style, where you needed to spend more time yourself figuring out what the best solution would be. But most candidates will have prepared using the past exams from 2013 to 2019, where the solution is mostly given in the client's proposed claims, and you were mainly tested on the argumentation.
DeleteHi Pete, I am a chemist and this Paper B was really a Nightmare to me. I spent a lot of time to look up in my dictionary for a lot of sectorial words which belong to the field of mechanics - the funny thing Is that, After finding the translation of these words in my native language, I was still unable to understand the meaning of most of them, because they really are used only in the mechanical field, let alone to put them together to understand the meaning of the invention! I am really disappointed by this. We all paid our registration to the EQE and to this paper, and we all spent months preparing ourselves, so I expected the EPO to treat all the Candidates equally, which Is not the case. How are people from Life science fields supposed to know the meaning of words such as "pulleys, axles, axles slidable in a slot, biasing force, etc."? I do not use pulleys in my everyday Life, I am still not sure about what they are, but they were essential for the invention. I saw many comments of mechanical engineers themselves saying that the content of paper B was way too mechanical to be understood by chem-biotech people. I really think that they should consider going back to separate paper A and B between different fields. By the way, If I work in a pharmaceutical Company, what's the point in testing me in a mechanical paper? Shouldn't this exam provide me With the possibility to represent my clients before the EPO? Than testing me in my own technical field seems more reasonable to me to verify wether I can become a European Patent Attorney. Also, drawings did not help. They were really complicated and full of mechanics details. And, Just to remark that again, enrolling to these papers Is NOT free of change, so EPO MUST allow all Candidates to start from the same level. This was not the case.
ReplyDeleteI am shocked at how difficult they have made the B exam over the last 2 years. Even on paper, they have become almost impossible to do within the time.
DeleteThere has still be no attempt to adapt the subject matter to take into account the technical limitations of WISEflow, where side-by-side comparison of the non-printable pages is impossible. This is particularly important where you are unfamiliar with the specialist language, where you sometimes need to compare not just single words, but the whole paragraph where it is used.
Barbara Angeletti (LinkedIn):
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Maria Luisa's post.
Paper B 2022 was too mechanically based. Candidates with biology, chemistry and life science background have evidently and strongly been penalized by the subject matter.
I am wondering whether this was fair.
Maria Luisa Iarossi (LinkedIn):
ReplyDeleteI just want to point out that paper B of this year was contrary to OJ2016, A24, point 9, according to which “With effect from 2017, a single Paper A and a single Paper B will be set in technical fields that are accessible to everyone”.
The technical field was not accessible to everyone.
Not all candidates have been put in a position to understand at least most of the words relevant for understanding the invention without undue burden, i.e., without having to look up such a large number of terms in the dictionary.
I think that when marking the exams, the Examination Board should at least consider these disadvantages.
How many more years do we, as candidates, have to put up with these completely unfair examinations especially for B and C in the last two years. It costs alot to enrol and the subject matter + timing to do these exams are not fair and places a huge amount of undue burden on candidates.
ReplyDeleteFully agree -also as an english native speaker- that the paper this year was extremely mechanical.
ReplyDeleteLast year's paper was also difficult, but at least accessible in terms of subject matter. I lost the first 20 minutes last year through technical problems which catapulted me over the stress barrier! In the end I failed with 41 points. The joke is, I cannot till today work out how I got the 41 points! Totally at a loss how my paper was marked.
Most qualification exams at least agree some boundaries, usually in the form of a syllabus. For many years, the EQE has worked with a trust system, where the committees were trusted not to go too far outside what a well-prepared candidate could expect to pass based on previous exams.
ReplyDeleteI think A and D are relatively consistent, and passing is still reasonably predictable with the correct preparation.
C has also remained relatively consistent, although it is artificial and bloated. Under the old system, you were almost certain to pass on the second attempt. The problems in passing are now mainly related to the ridiculous split, where you have top read the prior art twice.
B has now become a major barrier to passing - that was never supposed to be the case. The A and B exams were always considered the minor exams, and C and D were the major exams. A and B were originally designed to be taken after 2 years drafting experience, and C and D after 3 years.
I don't know what the solution is. It was never the intention to spend several years qualifying - you should be done in max. 2 years if you prepare.
They have certainly raised the bar for non-native speakers - if you look at the statistics based on nationality from 2021, you can see how much better native speakers did on B and C (see below).
I always use these ES+FI+IT+TR to give a rough idea of how non-native speakers perform - from teaching, I know that the knowledge level tends to be on-average good, but they are affected by longer and more complicated English texts. They will also suffer more by not being able to compare text side-by-side. It is not scientific. It is just my experience - other nationalities may also be used :-).
Pass+compensable fail:
A - All: 78% - GB+DE+FR: 83% - ES+FI+IT+TR: 68%
B - All: 65% - GB+DE+FR: 74% - ES+FI+IT+TR: 50%
C - All: 57% - GB+DE+FR: 76% - ES+FI+IT+TR: 39%
(the D1-1 compensation means that the statistics are useless).
It will certainly be improved when they make an effort adapt B and C exams to WISEflow.
Are they doing this on purpose to limit/cap numbers entering the profession. I agree that papers A, B and C have been very tough and overly complicated in recent years, especially papers B and C. There are paper D type questions creeping in to the other practical papers. Plus, the amount of issues to deal with during the exams in B and C gets longer and longer. I don't believe the papers can be done within 3 hours and 5 hours respectively, which was what they have been told stick to.
DeleteThere is no real evidence for that (look at the pass rate for D last year :-). I think it is more related to the way the exams are made. There is a natural tendency for anyone who writes exams to think that their exam is easier than it actually is, they are always trying to bring in new things, and they can correct for any issues in the marking. But as the exams get longer and more complex, this favours those who can read or scan fast, mentally process fast, jump to a decision (any decision) and generate a lot of answer in a short time (quantity-approach).
DeleteAnyone who reads/types slower, takes time to think about their answers, and is selective about what they do is at a huge disadvantage (quality approach). It also make them harder to resit because resitters adopt the quality approach - they spend time figuring out a "logical" approach based on past exams. A lot fail because they study too much, trying to do the exams at a too advanced level.
There is already plenty of baseline opposition in most professions to any kind of change. And there are still a lot of patent attorneys and firms with an old-fashioned zero-sum business approach, who don't mind more people failing, especially in countries with lower wages. They don't have to actively oppose anything, just choose not to support any new initiatives.
The EPO does not do this - they are behind initiatives like the candidate-support program, EN/FR/GE language training and pre-exam online training.