Paper B E/M 2014 -- Making the right connection

Paper B for Electricity / Mechanics (E/M) 2014 of the European Qualifying Examination (EQE) was held last Wednesday 26.02.2014. Below we present the claim set of our solution.

A patent application was filed for an electrical connector having a 'pin contact'. An office action has been received in which the Examiner objects to novelty on the basis of two documents. In addition the Examiner had a few minor objections: clarity and unity.


Your clients tells you that he wants protection for two different positions of these pin contacts. So we have to be careful that to keep this in the scope of protection. Helpfully, he also supplies you with new claims.

Looking at the office action, it seems that the Examiner is right, and that both documents are in fact novelty destroying. However, it does seem that Claim 2 as filed is novel over D2 and Claim 3 as filed is novel over D1. We cannot directly follow the suggestion of the client either, since we appear not to have basis for any of his Claim 1 amendments.

The description itself seems to offer little additional information beyond original Claims 2 and 3 that we might use to overcome the novelty problems.  The combination of claims 1-3 seems to overcome the objections of the Examiner and satisfy the client's wishes. Claim 3 does have the drawback that it includes the position of the pin connector, so we will have to try to get this out of the new claim. Fortunately, it appears that this is possible. One could argue this by following the guidelines (H-V, 3.2.1) or case law, e.g., T582/91.

Based on these considerations we come to the claim set given below. A disclaimer applies here; we have no more knowledge of the solution than any of the candidates. So we may be on the wrong track entirely. One should also realize that your argumentation is worth most of the marks.


Paper B E/M available

Paper B E/M is now available on our website via this link.

Our comments will be posted in due course.