The new Paper F exam is similar to the old Pre-exams, but less difficult, as it is aimed at a lower level of experience. Instead of only True/False questions they introduced a wider variety of question types (multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, multi-select, true or false, questions requiring a fill-in answer and/or questions requiring highlighting of relevant text passages) that can be automatically corrected.

For the legal part (part 1), there are no magic tricks, start studying and practicing as much as possible. Even though the difficulty level is lower, you still need to cover EPC and PCT, so I recommend starting in time.

I know that many candidates don't put a big effort into the Paper F (old Pre-exam) preparation, but I really believe it is so worth it! Investing your time and energy into preparing properly for Paper F will pay off, and not just for the later EQE modules, but also in your early years in the patent profession.

A successful Paper D candidate also had a very similar feedback:

"I believe the single smartest thing I did was to over-prepare for the pre-exam. This had two major benefits:

First, I passed the pre-exam comfortably, which removed a significant amount of stress.

More importantly, after a short break, I started my Paper D preparation already having a strong command of the EPC and PCT. I was familiar with navigating the reference materials quickly, which gave me a huge head start and prevented me from feeling overwhelmed."

How to study?

I don’t know about you, but it is very hard for me to study just by sitting and reading. For my brain, it is much easier to study by doing, i.e. answering actual legal questions.

In my opinion, you should aim to answer at least 1-2 legal questions every single day (or at least on weekdays) until the EQE. You don’t have to do them under time pressure, but take the time, read the corresponding sections in your reference books to actually understand the issue at hand. After you answered a question, don’t forget to correct your answer and take notes of your mistakes.

Luckily, there are plenty of legal questions available, such as past EPAC exams (and the mock EPAC), past Pre-exam questions, Paper F brain-teasers, DeltaPatents Basic Legal Questions (“L”) book.

A few things to remember:

• There are no trick questions in Paper F.

• Remember to always read the questions twice.

• Practice as many legal questions as possible. This will not only improve your knowledge but you will also learn how questions are phrased and what the important words are (“can”, “must” “always”, “never”, “only”, etc.).

• When practicing, make notes of your mistakes, and re-visit your notes every now and then.

For part 2, you should do past claims analysis exercises from the old Pre-exams. This is recommended after you reviewed the topics of amendments, added matter, clarity, novelty and inventive step.

Books to use

As you probably know, similarly to the other exams, you can use any written materials during the main exam.

You should pick one EPC and one PCT reference book (if you have more it will just slow you down), use them for a few months, annotate, highlight, and tab them so that they become your trusted friends during the exams. If you don’t know which books you should select, you can find a summary of EPC reference books and PCT reference books on my EQE blog.

Additionally, you can create your overviews, notes, tables or feel free to print my free materials.

Personally, I used my EPC reference book for 70-80% of the questions. For the rest, I used my PCT reference book, the Euro-PCT guide, the PCT Applicant’s guide (shortened version), and my own notes (time limit tables, etc.).

Online or printed materials?

Many of the documents (PCT Applicant’s guide, Euro-PCT guide, etc.) are already available from WISEflow, but you cannot open too many tabs and opening tabs can also slow down your browser (not just my experience). So, you might want to print a few additional, important documents.

It is also up to you if you fully trust WISEflow or if you would rather have a copy of the most important materials, such as the PCT Applicant’s guide. [If you feel more comfortable having a hard copy of the PCT Applicant’s guide, please save the trees and don’t print thousands of pages though. Focus on the questions and answers in the “Introduction to the International Phase” and “Introduction to the National Phase”, and print on both sides of the papers.

If I were you, I wouldn’t really print documents that are not that important but are available online. However, if you prefer printed materials, you can print documents that are more frequently needed. You can annotate, tab and highlight them just like your books and keep using them until the exam to get used to them. There are also candidates who use a mixed approach and print the index of the GL, but they then use the online GL.

One more comment on printing: I highly recommend deciding what you want to print as early as possible. This way, you can practice the same way until the EQE, using the same materials, whether they are online or on paper. If you do want to print some documents, such as the PCT Applicant’s guide, print them now and use the same printed documents in the upcoming months. As a result, you will get used to those and thus be a lot quicker when looking for something. Furthermore, you have plenty of time to highlight it, add tabs, comments, etc.

Some candidates like to use online materials when answering questions – that is fine, but remember to train under the same circumstances as the exam. For example, don’t search answers in your browser as you will not have access to Google from WISEflow. Moreover, you will not be able to use your online materials, such as the EPC.app or Ignacio Lobato’s electronic Paper D-guide from WISEflow, so make sure to have hard copies.

You can however start practicing using the “Advanced search” at EPO’s starting page, I heard from candidates that it is very helpful during the exam (but again, only if you know how to use it efficiently).