EQE 2018 Papers A & B

Today I did papers A and B. This is the second year that the technlogies are combined, so as expected a combination of electromechanical and chemistry skills were required. If you want to look, here are the official copies of the A and the B papers.

I think these papers were nicely balanced and they have clearly added extra guidance in each paper for those from the other field.

- A was about using lasers to create protrusions in glass. So this mainly mechanical (physics), with some slight chemistry style (instructions about what is essential). It was good paper, although I heard different views afterwards about the claim categories that should be used. It was 5 pages shorter than last year.

- B was a chemical paper, with a lot of electrical elements. I really liked this paper, even though it was longer than usual (a lot of information in the application and a lot in the prior art - it was 5 pages longer than in 2017).
I thought it was a good mix, and shows the advantages of mixing the technical fields. I have had cases like this in real-life with electrical and chemical elements, and you need to understand how to claim in both areas and to be able to judge novelty and inventive step.
They also provided an extra set of clean claims this year from the client so you could choose to work from the claims as filed or the claims as proposed by the client. Everybody I talked to had a different answer for claim 1, so it should be interesting to see what was actually expected.

In a few weeks you will get a copy of your answers. If you cut up the exam paper (with your childsafe scissors ,-),  and glued or taped it into your answer, check carefully to see if any piece is missing. Or whether there are pages missing. It can happen that pages get stuck together, and then are missed during scanning. Or pieces fall off. If you notice anything, notify the EQE secretariat.

EQE 2018 Paper D

I sat the paper under exam conditions in Munich as a bench marker to give the examination committees some materials for their marking discussion. If you want to look through the paper yourself, here are official copies of the paper.

My impressions were that it was a reasonable D paper - they are never easy, but I think that there were a lot of parts that were do-able and they asked frequent EQE subjects.
Most of the DI questions were open, so you needed to make strict choices about what to do - otherwise you ran out of time. The DII was more manageable than last year, and anyone who is Dutch or has lived in The Netherlands for more than a year will have immediately understood the product produced by the invention.😋. DII had less exploitation to be discussed.

Click below for some more details and spoilers about the subjects you had to deal with

I will be an epi benchmarker in Munich for EQE 2018

Every year, the Examination Committees rely on papers from "benchmarkers" to help fine-tune the marking. These papers are made by people who have already passed the EQE, and ideally they are looking for people who can get around 50 points.
The benchmarkers take the exam at the same time as everybody else under the same exam conditions. Their answers are then be used in the group discussions about what should be awarded points, and what is insufficient.
I am happy to support this on behalf of the epi. To anyone who has passed the EQE (or passes it this year), please volunteer next year when the epi sends the email in October. It is very much appreciated by the Examination Board and Committees. 

Last year I only did the D paper - this year I will do all 4 papers (D, A, B, C) in Munich. I just bought my safety scissors in case I need to cut up the papers.


Good luck!