March 11, 2026 M1 Part 2 – our provisional answers

As already mentioned in the blog post about M1 Part 1, there were no benchmarkers for M1 this year so we had to do the paper after you did it (and benchmark B in the meantime). At DP, Sander, Wouter and I did the paper and some of you were so kind as to send us your answers, so I took a sneak peak at those as well – after I did the paper of course!

I saw quite a lot of variation in the amended claims, in terms of how broad was claimed but even claims going in different directions, based on different interpretations of the prior art and of the description.

From our internal discussion I concluded that different answers are defendable. The good thing about M1 Part 2 is however that it is a free text paper so you can explain why you made the choices as you did, and your interpretation of e.g. the prior art shines through. I hope this allows the Exam Committee to award points also to solutions that may have not been foreseen or intended, but were properly argued and/or explained.

 

March 11, 2026 M1 Part 1 – our provisional answers

First of all a big thank you to all of you who forwarded us the M1 paper, or the bits and pieces thereof that they had available! No benchmarkers were invited for the M1 paper so we had to do the paper after the candidates did it.

Of course we were very curious as to what the paper would be like, as we had so little information to go on beforehand. Fortunately, there were no big surprises for us in terms of level or topics of the questions. Product-by-process claims were a hot topic in this paper. I indeed would regard that as a typical M1-level topic, but I was surprised that it came up in so many of the questions. I personally would have liked a bit more variety in topics.

Like many candidates we were surprised to see the invention in M1 Part 1 was again a hand plane for woodworking, just like in the mock M1 as available on the EPO-website. We now suspect that we know the hobby of at least one member of the M1 exam committee.

Below you’ll find our provisional answers. Please note that these do not necessary match the official model solution or the marking scheme. At this point we don’t know anything more about those than you do, we can only give our considerations and the conclusions we drew from those.

 

March 09, 2026 M1 2026: first impressions?

 To all who sat the M1-paper today:

What are your first impressions with respect to the very first M1-paper? Any general or specific comments?

 

For example, what did you think about the level of the questions, was that suitable for a candidate having two years of work experience?  Did any unexpected topics come up? Any striking differences between Part 1 and Part 2? Did you experience time pressure?

 

Please be reminded that, if you wish to lodge a complaint pursuant to point I.9. of Instructions to Candidates EQE2026 concerning the conduct of the examination, you must do so at the latest by the end of the day on which the paper to which your complaint pertains takes place, by filling in the dedicated form on the EQE website. The Form for paper M1 is only available on 09.03.2026, 13:00 - 23:59, CET.

 

The paper and our answers

We aim to post our provisional answers in a separate blog post as soon as possible after we have received a copy of the paper, preferably in all three languages. Should you have a copy of at least a part of the paper, please send it to any of our tutors or to training@deltapatents.com.

Please be reminded that you can view and print/download  copy of your exam answer after the exam, via the view/download button below the "1. Paper"-icon in the bottom left part of the outer shell of the respective flow. It may not be available immediately after the official end of the (part of the) paper, it can take 30-60 minutes to appear. Note that the copy of the answer of Part 1 most likely will include the questions, but not any printable documents. The paper of Part 2 will most likely not be downloadable as such.

 

 

Comments are welcome in any official EPO language, not just English. 

 

In order to make responding to your comments easier, please do not post your comments anonymously. You can use either your real name or a nickname. 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, and post responses to our answer (as soon as available) to the separate blog post with our answer.

 

We look forward to hearing from you!

March 09, 2026 Good luck with paper M1 2026!

 Our Paper M1 2026 blog will open for comments shortly after the end of the M1-paper (so on 9 March 2026, shortly after 13:00).

We aim to post our provisional answers to the paper shortly after we have a copy of the respective exam paper. Keep an eye out for further blog posts!

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 conduct, etc (see, e.g.,  EQE homepage, MyEQE, and the emails from the EQE secretariat).

All candidates, as well as tutors who helped candidates prepare for EQE 2026, 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.

The DeltaPatents team

NB: you can’t comment to this blog post; comments will be accepted at the post-exam blog post from 9 March 2026, 13:00.

March 07, 2026 A few last minute remarks

A few last-minute remarks in view of the papers of the second EQE week and maybe your final preparations for those.

Firstly, the EPO-website may look strange when you open for example the website compendium, the Guidelines or the Case Law Book. See the screenshot below:

If yours looks like this, clearing the browser history should work to get to the normal page. Then everything should work as normal again (at least it did for me).

 Secondly, in previous years you could download your answer from WiseFlow (almost) right after you finished your paper. This has been changed. Currently, you can only download your answer after also the exam time for the candidates who got more time to finish the paper for medical reasons (R.17 IPREE) has ended. This means that usually your answer will be available for download after about an hour and a half after the regular end time of the paper.