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