Region: Switzerland

Q: What options are open to a patent owner seeking to enforce its rights in your jurisdiction?A patent holder can send a warning letter and seek an out-of-court settlement with an alleged infringer. This is the most effective way to enforce…

11 April 2016

According to a fundamental legal principle codified in the Constitution, every person is equal before the law. Similarly, comparable cases should be dealt with comparably. In a recent case the Federal Administrative Court allowed the registration of a trademark that it considered to be non-distinctive based purely on the existing registration of several other similarly non-distinctive trademarks.

16 March 2016

Featured in IAM Yearbook 2016 – Building IP value in the 21st century

Switzerland is located in the centre of Europe, surrounded by the European Union without being a part of it. Although Swiss laws are formally independent from the EU legal framework, Switzerland’s close economic relations with the European Union…

23 October 2015

While the global quarrel over the pricing of patented drugs continues unabated, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has announced that it will offer a number of its medicines at significant discount to developing countries.According to a press…

28 September 2015

In an unprecedented move the United States is to withhold funding from WIPO. According to a report on the FOX News website, the decision is connected to concerns about the lack of progress in an investigation into allegations of serious misconduct…

27 September 2015

Merck has become the latest foreign pharmaceutical innovator to notch a patent win in an Indian court. Last Friday, the country’s Supreme Court enjoined Glenmark Generics from selling new low-cost versions of diabetes drugs Januvia and Janumet …

19 May 2015

Päivi Kairamo, chair of WIPO’s General Assemblies, has asked the United Nations’ Organisation of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) to investigate the claims made by James Pooley, the former deputy director general of the organisation, in a Report…

15 May 2015

With intellectual property under more scrutiny than it has ever been before, problems at three of the world’s top IP agencies could not have occurred at a worse time. The major controversies besetting both the European Patent Office and the World…

20 April 2015

An independent investigation into the allegations of serious misconduct made by former WIPO deputy director James Pooley against the UN agency’s Director General Francis Gurry was initiated last October, but stopped the following month, IAM can…

17 April 2015

It is now a year since James Pooley, then the deputy director for innovation and technology at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), made a series of explosive allegations about the UN agency’s Director General Francis Gurry. Detailed…

10 April 2015