Thursday, March 04, 2021 Our attempt at e-EQE Paper A 2021 - Coated engine components

Here is our quick first attempt at the claims (ignoring formal aspects).

We note that this claim set has two independent claims drawn to a method of manufacturing the claimed product. We considered including the (e-beam and plasma spraying) methods described by the client in a single claim, but decided to err on the safe side and claim both methods separately.

We welcome your comments. (Click "Read more" to see all 15 claims and all comments)

You may also wish to check our First impressions blog and the comments thereto - here. 

The complete A-paper is available here.

The DeltaPatents team

Jelle, Nico, Sander, Roel and Jessica

Claims 

 

1.  A coated engine component (10, 20) comprising a substrate (11, 21) coated with a ceramic oxide layer (13, 23), 

• wherein the substrate (11, 21) is made of a superalloy, 

• wherein the ceramic oxide is a metal oxide that melts at a temperature higher than 1600°C, 

• wherein the ceramic oxide layer has a thickness of at least 25 micrometre, 

• wherein the ceramic oxide layer has a columnar microstructure comprising columns with spaces (15a, 15b, 25) between the columns (14a, 14b, 14c, 24a, 24b), and 

• wherein the angle between the columns (14a, 14b, 14c, 24a, 24b) and the surface of the substrate (11, 21) is between 75 and 105 degrees. 

 

2. The engine component (10, 20) according to claim 1, further comprising an adhesion layer (12, 22) between the substrate and the ceramic oxide layer, wherein the adhesion layer is a nickel or cobalt alloy containing 10-50 wt.% of aluminium and up to 25 wt.% of chromium or yttrium. 

Wednesday, March 03, 2021 Paper A e-EQE 2021: first impressions?

To all who sat the A-paper today:

What are your first impressions to this year's A-paper?
Any general or specific comments?
Surprising elements in the client's letter and the prior art?

What was the effect of doing it online? Of typing your answer rather than writing it by hand? Could you benefit from being able to copy from the exam paper into your answer? And from copying parts of your answer elsewhere into your answer?

How did you experience taking the exam from your home or office location rather than in an examination center?

(How) was it different due to the due of the LockDown Browser?

What was the effect of the situation that you had to take the exam largely from the screen (as only a  part could be printed) rather than from paper?

Did you experience any technical difficulties during the exam? How & how fast were they solved?

Did you have enough time?
How many marks do you expect to have scored?
What is your expectation of the pass rate and the average score?

How did this year's paper compare to the papers of the last few years?
Similar difficulty level?
Could you find the wording for claim features in the clients letter and the prior art?
Was the subject-matter well understandable, for chemists as well as e/m candidates?
Multiple independent claims? Functional features?

The paper and our answers

Copies of the paper will be provided on this blog as soon as we have received copies of the papers, preferably in all three languages (English, French and German). Should you have a copy, please send it to any of our tutors or to training@deltapatents.com.

The core of our answers will be given as soon as possible in a separate blog post.

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 04-03-2021 23:24"), whereas using your real name or a nick nameis 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 this blog.
Please post responses to our answer (as soon as available) to the separate blog post with our answer.
Thanks!

Update:

• The paper
• Our first attempt at the claims

Wednesday, March 03, 2021 Paper A 2021 blog will open after the end of the exam, 3 March 2021 13:30

Good luck with paper A!

Our EQE blogs will be open for your comments and opinions w.r.t. the Pre-Exam, A, B, C and D shortly after the exams. We will post our (provisional) answers to the various papers shortly after the exam. To facilitate the discussions, we will also post copies of the papers as soon as possible after we received reasonably clean copies.

Do not post any comments as to the merits of the answers of a certain exam paper/flow on the blogs while an exam/flow is still ongoing. Also, do not post the invigilator password or anything else that may be considered the breach of the exam regulations, instructions to the candidates, code of conducts, etc (see, e.g.,  e-EQE website and the emails from the EQE secretariat).

All candidates, as well as tutors who helped candidates prepare for EQE 2021, are invited to contribute to the discussions on our EQE blogs! You can post your comments in English, French or German. You are invited to post your comments under your real name, but it is also possible to use a nickname if you wish to hide your identify.

The DeltaPatents team

 NB: you can not comment to this blog post; comments will be accepted from a new blog post as of 13:30