I was immediately enthusiastic about EPC.App as it supports different uses by different types of candidate. To answer legal questions efficiently, you need to be able to find details (like procedural acts, time limits & references) quickly and accurately. Traditionally, either you make your own reference book or you learn to use (& annotate) a book written by someone else.
EPC.App supports both approaches and everything in-between: a digital, cross-referenced version of the EPC is provided with extensive standard notes, mark-up and comments from the editors. The standard notes were used by them to pass their EQE’s, and also include links to Articles & Rules, OJEPO’s, case law & guidelines.
The main structure is based on the Articles, followed by the relevant Rules. As you study on-line, hyperlinks allow you to open the resources, to make summaries and to add your own annotations. Standard notes can be hidden, so you can create a reference only covering the issues that you have difficulty with. If you need more explanation, you can make it and add it yourself. And you can put annotations next to the Article and/or Rule that you think is most logical. Just before the exam, you export it as a pdf and print it. As it becomes your reference, you can find the details a lot quicker at the exam.
To try out the book, I used only the standard EPC author’s notes for the benchmarking of Paper D in 2019. See below for more details of the version I used, what I quickly found and what I did not find. PCT was not included in 2019 editions, but I am working with the editors to make PCT.App, which will be available for EQE 2020.
** Update 1 Oct 2019: 1st edition of PCT.App now available on-line, updated stand-alone EPC.App book available
- I did not add any comments – I wanted to test the basic version with only the standard editors’ notes and annotations. I did adapt the standard mark-up, choosing different text colors, background colors and underlining.
- With EPC.App, I generated a pdf of 488 pages with the settings: 10 point, no blank pages + continuous numbering, part/chapter overviews. All the fonts were automatically embedded, including Roboto & LMMath. This could be printed or brought to a print-shop.
- Option: Using Pumbo (www.pumbo.nl), I uploaded the pdf. There are many Print-On-Demand publishers who allow a single copy to be ordered. On 115 gr machine coated (silk) A4 paper, color print with a mat laminate paperback cover, it costs EUR 55.
- Option: I prefer A5 size books to carry around, so I flattened the comments, and saved as PDF/A-2B. The DTP program I used complained about the Roboto Light font which I replaced by Roboto. I added the trim and bleed boxes, and shrank to A5. That cost EUR 35 to have a single copy printed. It was 145mm x 210 mm, 25mm thick and weighed 890g.
- I tabbed only the EPC Articles and Rules that are most frequently required to be cited on Paper D (these are found in the Examiner’s Reports of the last 10-15 years):
– Using hyperlinks allows a very quick way of accessing the information and summarizing it
– It is relatively compact, allowing you to scan through the whole Article/Rule and get a good overview. The level of the standard comments cover the EQE level efficiently, and does not include a lot of conflicting case law.
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