Region: Switzerland

New report claims status of US, EU and UK as leading innovators under threat as they struggle to maximise return on R&D investment.

20 July 2018

In the latest case relating to AstraZeneca’s anti-cancer drug Faslodex, a registration was revoked by the Patent Court for lack of inventive step due to pre-published scientific articles; the Supreme Court recently remitted the case back to the Patent Court.

20 June 2018

The granting practice of supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) was recently challenged at the Federal Patent Court. In yet another SPC matter, the Federal Patent Court assessed the scope of an SPC in summary proceedings.

08 November 2017

Featured in IAM Yearbook 2018

Court developments In Switzerland, the Federal Patent Court is exclusively competent for patent infringement and validity cases. The number of cases handled by the court has remained relatively constant over the past three years. In its annual…

12 October 2017

Featured in Patents in Europe 2018/19: Helping business compete in the global economy

Q: What options are open to a patent owner seeking to enforce its rights in your jurisdiction? According to Swiss law, if a patent is being infringed the patent owner is entitled to stop activities such as the advertising, selling, manufacturing…

02 October 2017

The supplementary protection certificate granting practice in Switzerland is being challenged at the Federal Patent Court – in particular, whether and if so how the granting practice should be brought in line with recent European Court of Justice case law.

13 September 2017

Featured in IAM Yearbook 2017

In operation since 2012, the Federal Patent Court (FPC) is now the first-instance court for all civil law disputes involving patents. The FPC is exclusively competent for patent infringement and patent validity cases. It also oversees other civil…

12 October 2016

This blog was updated on 12th October to include new information about the vote that took place in Geneva on 7th October and to provide links to further documents that have been made public, including what is said to be an unredacted copy of the…

08 October 2016

This blog has been updated to include additional material relating to the report compiled by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services following its investigation into alleged misconduct by WIPO DG Francis Gurry. The legal counsel to…

29 September 2016

A recent Federal Patent Court decision considered the applicability of international patent exhaustion due to the subordinate significance of the patented features. It confirms that the requirements to avoid international patent exhaustion appear to be rather high, in particular with respect to complex products where most of the patent rights concern not the whole product, but rather only some component thereof.

17 August 2016