According to the decision of the President of the European
Patent Office dated 20 April 2022 adopting the rules concerning the
establishment of a European Patent Administration Certification and in particular
in view of Articles 3(2), 4 and 11 thereof, the EPAC Board has decided the
following for the 2022 examination:
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The first part of the examination will consist of a
multiple-choice test of 15 questions.
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For each question, the candidate will be asked to select the
most correct answer from four alternative options.
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This first part will be assessed using auto-marking and each
question will carry the same weight.
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The duration of the first part will be one hour.
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The first part of the examination will account for a third
of the total points available.
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Where a candidate gets eight or more questions correct, they
will be considered to have passed the first part and their second part will be
marked by the EPAC Board.
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Where a candidate gets seven or fewer questions correct, they
will be considered not to have passed the first part; the examination will be
considered failed and the second part will not be marked.
A break of three hours will take place between the first
part and the second part of the examination.
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The second part will consist of up to six open questions and
will be marked by the EPAC Board.
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The number of points attributed to each question will be
indicated on the examination paper.
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The duration of the second part will be two hours.
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The second part of the examination will account for
two-thirds of the total points available.
A candidate will be declared to have passed the examination
if the sum of the points awarded for the first and second parts reaches at
least 60% of the total points available.
For both parts of the examination, candidates are requested
not to assume any additional facts not presented in the questions.
Marking will be carried out on the basis of the articles and
rules in force on the day of the examination.
Candidates will not be asked to specify legal bases in their
answers. The markers will focus on the reasoning followed by the candidates and
the conclusions reached.
