Every year, the Examination Board looks for new EQE committee members. The quality of future exams depends on their knowledge & experience, so please volunteer if you can.
New members are mainly needed to mark – after approx. 2 years, you may be asked to help draft exams. You will also actively take part in implementing the new exams F & M1-M4.
The official notice is on the EPO EQE page here under “Notices”. Apply online before 9 Sep 2024.
- You must have completely passed the EQE
- A minimum commitment is required of 120 hours per year, including a minimum of four days of meetings
- You are also expected to help with testing and checking of exams, bench marking or acting as an EQE official, which might require further or different time commitments.
- You are volunteering, so there is no direct remuneration. But travel expenses are reimbursed.
- Appointment is for at least 2 years
- You can indicate your preferences:
- Papers A + B (last exams in 2026)
- Paper C (last exam in 2026)
- Paper D (last exam in 2026)
- Paper F (first exam in 2025)
- Paper M1 (first exam in 2026)
- Paper M2 (first exam in 2026)
- Paper M3 (first exam in 2027)
- Paper M4 (first exam in 2027)
It is a good way to keep up to date about the legal and policy changes at the EPO. You can use this to keep your colleagues in your company/firm up-to-date. It is also a good opportunity to exchange ideas between EPO examiners and patent attorneys – this does not happen enough, and such insights are very valuable. They also greatly benefit from younger and more diverse members, especially from “smaller” EPC states.
Comments
17 replies on “Please help shape the new EQE in 2025-2027”
In principle, I would be happy to help improve the quality of the (new and old) EQE.
Unfortunately, the e:EQE papers have often been very poorly drafted. That is something that should not happen if you have a large number of exam committee members cross-checking the papers beforehand. However, from the rumors I heard – which fit with the poor quality – a small “inner group” has drafted papers without giving the possibility to verify that they are clear and suitable in length beforehand.
Additionally, in many years, the German translations have fatal flaws, which should also not happen if you have enough native speaker cross-checking the translation beforehand.
Thus, a question to the people who have been working in the examination committees: Could you maybe provide some account on your experience?
It is impossible to guide candidates for future years. We used to say – prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but the “worst” seems to be getting worse each year.
In the past, comments from blogs and tutors were definitely taken into account for future exams. But any criticisms are now answered with a promise to “fix it in the new system”.
In the past, I always had the feeling that the EQE machine was generally under control based on informal comments from many senior key people. And you could see that in the exams being drafted.
Now I only hear frustrations and a sense of helplessness from all sides. This also seems reflected in the B and C exams.
It is difficult to believe that “the new system” will be any better without anyone or any organisation taking control.
The last few years, we have seen that the quality of the A en B exams is rather bad. So bad that the committee had to adapt the scoring table ensuring that a sufficient number of candidates still passes…
The C exam has been a below par the last ten years. The committee could easily have drafted two papers before and after the break (focussing on different aspects), but they stick to the “old” format as if there is no break… This is stubborn and foolish and the SB does not insist on adapting the Exam to fit the online format…
Only the D Paper is of constant high quality with balanced D1 questions and very good legal advice papers.
In my opinion, it is best when the members of all committee are replaced in the new EQE starting on 2025…
Yes – they can compensate in the marking for candidates not finishing (and raise the passing rate), but there are a lot of candidates who were not able to write enough to get even close to passing.
There are a lot of very good candidates who will be trying for the 3rd or 4th time to pass B and C next year. Some of them have just given up because of the unpredictability in the subject-matter and lengths. It is very difficult for non-native speakers to deal with it all, especially in Wiseflow where you cannot compare parts of the exam side-by-side on the screen.
I agree that the D exam has managed to stay roughly the same, but passing has also become more unpredictable. There has been a shift to very strict legal basis, requiring umbrella articles and Guidelines. The other shift to more marks in D1 favors the legal nerds over candidates with more practical experience. Also the shift to very long D1 questions means that fewer subjects are actually tested, and it is easier to lose a lot of marks if they happen to ask 2x subjects that you do not know so well.
For the 2025 D Paper, the division of points is D1:D2=45:55. This has my preference.
In addition, the committee responsible for D has leaned from inquiries, that candidates prefer longer D1 questions (more points) to a pile of shorter ones. Any exam can only test a few aspects of legal patent knowledge.
Often D1 questions have various manners for scoring points – it is not about whether or not the candidate has found the “golden” answer published in the compendium.
It used to be a balance in marking between applying the law to answer the questions, and citing legal basis to support argumentation. The last 2 years, the relative number of marks for legal basis has increased, and I have seen candidates that have failed because they were only missing some legal basis from a correct answer.
The situation is even worse in practice for C. The standard advice from tutors is to print everything possible, and start reading before the exam starts. Then read everything again during their lunch break, assuming that a large portion will be relevant because of the refusal to split the exam into 2 parts. This is fully within the rules if they do not discuss with others.
I don’t understand why this is considered fair – there are a lot of candidates who do not realise they can do it, limiting themselves unnecessarily.
There are also many who try to do the exams electronically because they have no-one to advise them and they believe the official info that the exams have been “adapted to the online format”. Or they do not have access to a quick printer. Or they have printing problems before the exam. Did you know that a printer notification during the exam can crash Wiseflow?
Either split C into 2x independent parts or give candidates 1x block of 6 hours. There is no acceptable excuse anymore – just fix it.
This is really important work and at the same time excellent fun and a great opportunity to get to know your fellow EPAs in other countries and positions than your own. Having served on EC-II (the good old Paper C) for 13 years I can warmly recommend joining one of the committees!
Can you please provide some explanations on how the examination committee works?
We have seen again this year, e.g., for the Pre-EQE that already 6 questions had to be neutralized during the marking, and a 7th question has been declared to have been provided with a wrong sample solution in an appeal. That is a huge number of drafting errors, one of which the examination committee was unwilling to admit itself responsive to the appeal.
This amount of drafting errors seems to have become standard in the e:EQE. And, in each case, it shines a disastrous light on the affected examination committee.
Thus: is the majority of the committee members only allowed to participate in the marking? And is an “inner group” keeping the draft from being proof-read by the other examination committee members before the exam date?
How do the committees deal at present with the issue that they are destroying their own credibility, and that of the e:EQE?
P.S.: As you have been in the “Paper C” committee. It was known – at the latest after 2022 – that the simple time split into 3h + 3h did not work if all prior art had to be scanned in the first part.
I have been told various cock-and-bull stories that students gaining more parts in the 2nd part (which is obvious because by then they have been able to read all prior art) arise a follows: their senior patent attorney supervisors spend the morning in parallel reading and analysing a 2nd print out of the 1st part, then make an extremely educated guess what the questions in the 2nd part will be and spend their lunch break explaining both the fortunetelling questions and corresponding answers to their candidates.
Can you please comment on how this bizarre rumor is making the round? And why you did not make any attempt to improve the electronic exam after having collected suggestions in surveys (e.g., changing the time split to 3,5h + 2,5h to take into consideration the need to read the prior art in the 1st part)?
The situation is even worse. The standard advice from tutors is to print everything possible, and start reading before the exam starts. Then read everything again during their lunch break, assuming that a large portion will be relevant because of the refusal to split the exam into 2 parts. This is fully within the rules if they do not discuss with others.
I don’t understand why this is considered fair – there are a lot of candidates who do not realise they can do it, limiting themselves unnecessarily.
There are also many who try to do the exams electronically because they have no-one to advise them and believe the official info that the exams have been “adapted to the online format”. Or they do not have access to a quick printer. Or they have printing problems before the exam. Did you know that a printer notification during the exam can crash Wiseflow?
Either split into 2x independent parts or give candidates 1x block of 6 hours. There is no acceptable excuse anymore – just fix it.
Hi Gabrielle, I will be happy to share some of the experience I’ve had in examination committee EC-II where I stopped last year. I have unfortunately no experience with the drafting and marking of other papers than paper C. In our committee we had a pre-marking meeting shortly after the exam had been concluded and a “real” marking meeting some months later. The rationale for the pre-marking meeting was to develop a common understanding between us markers on how to mark the papers correctly. Before the pre-marking meeting each member of the group (we were >60 markers in EC-II from both epi and EPO) would mark a small batch of papers, typically 5-10, and at the meeting we would then discuss our differences (if any) in marking. These discussions would lead to the development of the official marking sheet which would be used by all members on all papers allocated to each member of the committee. To be continued!
This rather complex procedure in my opinion worked really well and led to, I belive, a fair assessment of the candidates. Some years there were surprises, like e.g. novelty attacks that the exam paper drafter had not thought of, or issues with translation errors in some of the exam sets. Such issues were all dealt with efficiently at the pre-marking meetings. What very specifically was an issue with the electronic version of Paper C was, as you mention, the division into two parts which some years resulted in some candidates doing a very poor job in one part which they were unable to correct in the other part. I believe we were for the most part even able to deal with this issue, but ultimately a new way of testing candidates for opposition readiness was required, which has resulted in the “new EQE”.
I have been training candidates for ABC since 1993, and allow myself to speak from experience.
In spite of their increasing difficulty, in the last years, the ABC papers were somehow (too) predictable. In the examiner’s reports, the comment was often that candidates try to apply a given method and not really think about what was required. I even know some “method ayatollahs”! Only their method is the right one, the others are just crap.
The problem with the recent papers is an excess of information to digest as the papers were becoming longer and longer, even if technically they were considered simple by the committees. This is also a problem for candidates not having as mother tongue an official language of the EPO.
What is happening with the present two-part paper C, happened in the past with A and B. Both were linked and after A, during the lunch break, candidates gathered to devise what could be the starting point for B. This was one of the reasons for separating A and B. Candidates knew when starting B whether they had been successful for A.
Now candidates are sitting in their own environment, it is more difficult, but not impossible to guess what could come next in paper C.
With WiseFlow, Paper C should indeed be split in two distinct parts. The holy cow of one long exam should be given up. As papers are produced years in advance, I doubt that much will change with ABC until the new EQE.
I just hope that the EQE committees will propose some mock papers for the new EQE, as had been done when A-B chemistry and A-B mechanics were merged. What is preferable, the devil you know or the devil you don’t know?
The difficulties in the exam are compounded by WiseFlow. It works better than in the first years, but as candidate you are always at the risk of a crash. As the EPO is only one of WiseFlow’s many clients, the latter will never be tailored to fully suit the the needs of the EQE.
This is why in some brains at the EPO the idea emerged to transform the EQE in a MCQ. It also had the advantage to be cheaper and quicker to correct, cf. the Pre-Exam. Thank god, we escape this! However without better information on the new EQE, it will be difficult to correctly train the candidates.
I fear that in the few next years candidates sitting the new EQE will be used as Guinea pigs, whereby for them their professional future is at stake. Not really fair, but what is fair in this day and age?.
An interesting opportunity to help shape the new EQE and to contribute to the truly European nature of our profession.
Hi Pete, do you know why these committees are not remunerated at all? In the UK, you get paid per paper you mark as an examiner. It seems like EPO, which is more organised and has much more candidates and income could afford it? thanks
The epi and EPO are jointly responsible for the EQE, but the roles have changed over the years.
There was never any legal arrangement for who should pay the EQE costs. Initially, it was not very much (very few candidates, EQE only every couple of years) and the EPO paid the costs. The EPO also handled the organisation and allowed examiners to make and mark the exams. When I started as a tutor in 2008, the EPO provided more than half of the examination committees, and they even had people who were assigned the task of improving the consistency and quality.
But over the years, the costs were projected to grow, and there was a lot of internal and external pressure on the EPO to control costs. The EPO only has 1x main source of income: the fees paid by applicants/proprietors, but these cannot be set too high. But they also have an office to run, a lot of well-paid examiners, and ongoing obligations to pay pensions or retirees. There was also a large backlog for patent applications.
So, the EPO reassigned a lot of the examiners away from the committees, and arranged with the epi that the epi would fill-up the places with epi volunteers. Unfortunately, the epi also does not have a budget to cover this – their only income is the subscription from practicing patent attorneys. So, the epi can only contribute by providing volunteers.
Balancing the budget within the EPO is the main reason behind a lot of the organisational and procedural changes we have seen during the last decade. Their struggle is to maintain quality and not increase the applicant/proprietor fees too much.
In addition, the main driver when reforming the EQE (from Pre-Exam to the new EQE) is to lower costs (out-of-pocket costs, salaries, marking time, exam drafting hours) as much as possible.
So, to pay the EQE markers, we need to do one or more of the following:
increase the EQE fees, increase the epi subscription fees and allocate a budget for marking / EQE, reduce the number of hrs to make / mark, reduce travel costs for making / marking, etc
There may be other EQE costs to consider – I think that some Board and Supervisory Board members are paid for their time. I don’t know what the arrangement is for the Disciplinary Board of Appeal (paid by the EPO?).