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F2025 - Examiner's Report available

 The Examiner's report (including the model solution) of paper F 2025 has been published in the compendium on the EPO website, see Paper F | epo.org.

For both parts, the pass threshold has been set at 70%, which means that you needed 35 points in part 1 to pass. In part 2, Question 10 (3 marks) has been neutralised, so the maximum possible score for Part 2 is 47 instead of 50. For a pass, you needed 33 points. You need to have a pass for both parts separately to pass the paper and be allowed to sit M1 and M2 in 2026. 

We noted that in Part 1 (and only in Part 1) in some of the questions you could have scored partial points if you did not answer all subquestions correctly. It appears that for the other questions it was "all or nothing", so if you answered one subquestion wrong you would get no points for the entire question. At this moment we don't know why these specific questions were selected to allow partial scoring. 



Comments

  1. Awful marking system. Seems more luck based as to what sub-question you got correct for some of these questions.

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  2. I am hoping IPKAT or someone picks this up and writes an article. Scandal.

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    1. I hope someone writes about it!

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  3. I know this is a long stretch but if anyone could share ways of getting the marking scheme revised or even to prompt the EPO to take a closer look would be greatly appreciated.

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    1. support@epo.org seems to be the best I could find but this needs to get resolved. Having no consistency relies on luck rather than knowledge. This is simply not fair.

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    2. Thanks. I might sit on it over the Easter weekend to work out what to say and send them an email next week.

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  4. Extremely unfair! Is the test examining luck or actual knowledge?

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  5. Please advise how to get the Examination Board to review

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    1. Seems unreachable. I've contacted support, they refer me to the EQE contact form on your portal and from then on I get a generic email regarding how to appeal when I explicitly asked not offer this as a solution as I'm aware of it. The whole process is shameless.

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    2. That is disappointing and very frustrating at how powerless we are.

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    3. We really need to band together. All participants that want to appeal so start a crowd fund, sign a petition saying they agree with the appeal against the mark scheme and spread the word to all IP media of what is happening. We spend so much time and effort in these exams, the least we deserve is an exam which is consistent with it's marking. Who, let alone a whole board, can be daft enough to think offering partial marks to only some questions be deemed fair.

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    4. Also, any of those lucky people that passed should also show support!

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    5. I support you in facing this opaque grading system, but calling me and those who succeeded 'any of those lucky people' is really not respectful.

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  6. Is it still possible to do the Intensive Exam Track after failing F? Not being able to take M1 & M2 next year means that the following year will be really intense. In any case, I would rather not waste time preparing for F again if I can help it.

    https://patentepi.org/en/epi-students/qualifying-as-a-european-patent-attorney/eqe-format-change.html

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    1. It appears you can.

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    2. I don;t remember where I read it, but it appears that once you enrol in the new EQE (by sitting the F), you cannot go back to old EQE even if you failed.

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    3. The Intensive Exam Track is under the new EQE. I can't find anything explicitly prohibiting anyone from taking it even if you fail F. However, failing certain combinations of the M papers will require you to pass F before your M papers will be graded.

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  7. Answer to question 4.2 in the compendium is surprising, to say the least. Either I (and Deltapatent's tutors and probably 99% of the experienced EPAs) did not understand G1/22, or...? In addition, for the French candidates, the question is more than ambiguous : "La société R peut être nommée en tant que demandeuse unique lors du dépôt de EP-X et de la revendication valable de la priorité de DE-X". Ca ne veut rien dire !! Can someone at the EPO who has French/German as mother tongue at least read the questions after they have been translated, to make sure that at least they are gramatically correct ?

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    1. Can you be more precise on this?

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  8. Another ambiguous question for French candidates is question 15.3 : "Un brevet pour X peut être délivré à A uniquement si B retire sa demande avant la publication, et vice versa" A translation in english would be : "A patent for X can be granted to A only if B withdraws their application before publication and vice versa". It's not very clear if one should read "A only" or "only if". At least when I first read the question in French, I read it as "A uniquement", and therefore my answer was TRUE...

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  9. Q9 of part 1 as well

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  10. Marking is set after the exam by the examination board

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    1. That is absolutely absurd and really unfair. Where's the consistency with the partial markings? They are toying with people's lives quite literally. All the hard work put in and I'm failing by a mark because my 4/5 correct question wasn't chosen as a partial markings awarded question. Extremely unfair.

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  11. Hi, can somebody explain to me how this marking scheme is based on legal knowledge? For example, question A has no partial marks awarded and question B has partial marks awarded... So if the candidate gets question A fully correct and question B partially correct he then passes but if it's the other way round where he gets one sub question of question A incorrect but question B fully correct he then fails even though he got the same amount of questions and subquestions correct? How in the world is this fair.

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  12. There is no logic in any of it. It was a throw of the 🎲

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  13. was there any information that both parts should be passed above a certain grade? I didnt see this info disclosed

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  14. The marking scheme is ridiculous! So heavily reliant on 3 questions worth 5 marks each. So if you were unlucky to not get any marks in those chances are you failed!

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    1. Totally agree on this. Having 5/6 sub-questions wrong in these first 3 questions, takes away everything.

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  15. I think for one wrong sub-question, they reduced marks by 2.

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  16. There are some real valid arguments being discussed here in the comments about some questions that should have been neutralized and valid complaints from people that are understandably very frustrated that some questions got partial marks and others didn't and I support them in their efforts in getting the marking system changed for the future.

    But all those comments saying that the exam is 'luck-based' and that it doesn't test legal knowledge just makes you appear like a sore loser. If you studied hard enough, you would have passed irregardless of the marking scheme. The difficulty of the questions was fair and the answers from deltapatents are almost identical, with the exception of the question on priority.

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    1. So you think that person A knows more and should rightly have passed because they got question X right and person B knows less because they got question Y wrong?
      If thats the case, would a all or nothing scoring system assessed that?

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    2. I think the point is only of inadequate marking system wherein one with 43/50 (e.g.) correct sub-questions may pass and other with same (43/50) correct ratio may fail.

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    3. and it is this exact inadequate marking system that has cost me. I could have got 7 subquestions more incorrect (demonstrating less legal knowledge) had the 8th mark been in Q12 where I got 4/5 subquestions correct (which offered me zero marks) meaning I failed by 1 mark.

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    4. 8th correct subquestion answer* sorry.

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    5. @Anonymous of 10:10,
      I'm the person you are replying too and I think that some multiple choice questions and answers are more cohesive than others. If you look at the papers, you will see that all multiple choice questions which have partial points are all questions where the sub-questions treat different EPC articles/rules, while the multiple choice questions which do not have partial points all treat applications of the same article/rule for each subquestion. It is more nuanced than you are trying to say and not random, though it might appear to be at a first glance.

      But nevertheless, the current marking system gives people a feeling of unfairness, so I am fully in support of changing it for that reason alone. They should just communicate better to us.

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    6. I agree. The exam seems to be very easy, compared to previous years' pre-exams. Regardless of the marking scheme.

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  17. I guess I've demonstrated less legal knowledge then based answering 4/5 correct in Q12 as opposed to getting the question completely right and getting one incorrect subquestion in a different question which offered partial marks... absolutely ridiculous.

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  18. Im in agreement

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  19. Im actually referring just to the questions awarded partial marks and not the rest although a point could be made for those too.

    So you agree that questions awarded with partial questions are somewhat more nuanced. Correct?
    So, based on that alone,
    Say Person A gets Q2 correct (6/6) and get 5 marks and in Q9 (4/6) and thus 0 marks. Total 5 marks;
    For the same questions Person B gets 5/ 6 correct and thus 3 marks for Q2, and for Q9 marks 5/6 and thus 3 marks. Person B has gotten 1 more mark i.e was advantaged/lucky (no disrespect- just showing that the system is not fair).

    This is just one example. There are multiple iterations.

    If im wrong please let me know!

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    1. No, I think you are right. I was under the impression that questions gave partial points in ratio with the amount of subquestions you have correct.

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    2. That being said I don't really have a problem with different questions being worth different points due to the cohesiveness as I mentioned before, but I do have a problem with the gradations in scoring for a particular question e.g. (6/6) on Q9 is 5 points, (5/6) on Q9 is 3 points, but (4/6) on Q9 is 0 points. It is an implicit guess-correction penalty which was not announced. As I said, EPO should have communicated much better about the marking in advance. But I still don't see elements of luck, just a very very obscure marking system.

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    3. In continuation, I do think that the guess-correction penalty is unfair. There is no reason at all to have it, and it does indeed not contribute to the goal of testing our legal knowledge.

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    4. The all-or-nothing scoring seems strange to me, as I would consider that marks should be awarded if you would have 2 out of 3 (Q.3, Q.4 of F1) or 5 or 5 our of 6 (Q.12 of F1) or 3 out of 4 (Q.4 of F2) correct. But I agree that is what the Examiners report suggests to be the case for many questions - only for some does it explicitly indicate that partial marks could be awarded (note: without indicating how).

      Not awarding partial marks is some, even the majority of, subquestions are correct reminds my of my German teacher in higher school, who made is to a short intermediate test on the “mit-nach-bei-…”, “an-auf-hinter-…”, “durch-für-ohne-…” lists: only when all three lists were complete and fully correct did we score 10/10, and otherwise a “1/10”, “as only complete and correct lists are correct”. …

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  20. Here are more iterations: Person A – 6 wrong- total marks 11

    Q1. 3/5=0
    Q2. 4/6=0
    Q9. 4/6= 0
    Q6. 4/4=4
    Q7. 2/2=3
    Q8. 6/6= 4

    Person B- 6 wrong- total marks 14

    Q1. 4/5=3
    Q2. 5/6=3
    Q9. 5/6= 3
    Q6. 3/4=2
    Q7. 1/2=1
    Q8. 5/6= 2


    And where partial marks don’t mean anything

    Person A: Fails

    Q1. 3/5= 0
    Q2. 4/6=0
    Q9. 4/6=0
    Q15. ¾=0
    Gets Q3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15 right and fails. 11 right

     Gets 11 right + the sub-answers right and 4 wrong & fails

    Person B= 17 marks
    Q1. 5/5= 5
    Q2. 5/6=5
    Q9. 6/6=5
    Q15. 4/4=2

    Needs Q6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12. Can get wrong Q 3, 4, 5, 13, 14

     Answers 10 right and gets 5 wrong and passes

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  21. I got 36/44 questions correct and still failed. I guess getting 82% of the questions correct isn't deemed as demonstrating legal knowledge. What a wonderful mark scheme.

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  22. Is there ‘anyone’ (maybe someone that didn't take the exam) that thinks that an appeal would make them consider this flawed partial marking system?

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  23. Or knows if an appeal was ever successful?

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    1. there was a successful appeal last year: https://www.epo.org/en/boards-of-appeal/decisions/d240002eu1

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    2. Thank you @ Benjamin

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  24. Whats very frustrating is that they obviously knew that there will be partial scoring hence the warning of not leaving questions unanswered!


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  25. I'm sorry, but I don't understand the whining here.
    It's possible that the scoring system was more unfair than in previous years. But the general difficulty of the exam was much lower than in the pre-exams from previous years. With good preparation, everyone should be able to pass.

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    1. To be fair, the scoring system was from the unset very uncertain, in addition to being quite unfair. I understand the frustration on those who failed.

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    2. And I did prepare and put in a lot of effort. I scored 36/44 in part 1 (which is 82%) yet failed by 1 mark. Tell me how that's fair?

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    3. I think it's very normal that people express their frustrations here, because there isn't really any other platform where you can express them (as far as I know). I do agree that the exam difficulty was lower than the pre-exams. But it sure would have been nicer if the examination board gave their guinea pigs a bit more clarity on what kind of grading system to expect.

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    4. Those saying the exam difficulty was lower than the pre-exams, surely that should be a given based on only needing 1 year experience as opposed to 2 years to sit the exam? But then again, nothing surprises me with these papers anymore.

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    5. Oh yes I fully agree with that. I was just replying to the original message. Wouldn't surprise me either if they would have made it more difficult haha. Combined with the mess that is the grading system, you could even argue that the F exam was more difficult to pass than the pre-exams even though the difficulty of the questions was lower. Curious for the statistics...

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  26. Just thinking out loud on the perceived unfairness of the grading system.

    Would the perception be different if the grading system would be known in advance? e.g., knowing in advance that questions with incorrect answers give zero or partial marks and that passing grade is 70%

    In the end that would have not changing at all how people responded.

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    1. It's very difficult to give an answer to your question in hindsight. Maybe people would have chosen their answers more carefully knowing that each subquestion was equally important, maybe not. But it definitely gives a certain peace of mind to know what to expect.

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    2. If they told me in advance that they would select a handful of questions for partial marks opportunities and other questions being all or bust, I would have seriously reconsidered how I spent my valuable free time. Doesn't fill one with confidence knowing I have to prepare for an exam that doesn't exactly always reward a correct answer nor reward "demonstrating legal knowledge" rather it being a case ofif you get a sub-question wrong then pray that question is chosen for partial marks.

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    3. being a case off if you* - that should have said in the previous message. Apologies.

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    4. Third time lucky - being a case of if you*... No wonder I failed the exam haha when I can't even string a simple sentence together.

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  27. Well it is one of the things about this job, if you want to become a European patent attorney, you need to prepare for the exams. And they do not get easier in M1/2/3/4. Not sure how knowing the marking scheme would have changed your study behaviour. I definitely understand your frustrations though and hope you will refind the courage to participate next year!

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    1. Oh I meant to type that as a reply, not as a new thread. Woops.

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  28. @Lucas
    Please explain how getting 6/6 in two questions and 4/6 in other translate in one failing and one passing.

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    1. @Lucas- you find it fair for it to be so heavily weighted on 3 questions to actually demonstrate your knowledge?

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    2. @ everyone arguing about the difficulty of the exam. This is beside the points discussed above. Its actually that some people passed arguably knowing less!

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    3. Oh sorry for the late reply. I understand your frustrations, but if you want a real answer to your questions, you should try to ask someone involved with the examination board why they made their marking scheme the way it is.

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  29. Statistics are out: 86% pass rate for the first Paper F.

    https://www.epo.org/en/news-events/news/results-first-eqe-paper-f-published

    The pass rate for the pre-exam of the last X years:
    2024 - 88%; 2023 - 85%; 2022 - 97%; 2021 - 87%; 2019 - 88%; 2018 - 74%; 2017 - 76%

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  30. What about Papers ABCD? when can we expect the result? There was no advice no communication that is not professional.

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    1. No communication but I asked through the portal and they told me July

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