Due to the revision of the Patents Act, the corresponding implementing provisions in the Patents Ordinance need to be amended. This has been taken as an opportunity to completely revise the outdated ordinance. On this page, you'll find information on the status and contents of the revision.

The revised Patents Act passed by Parliament introduces various new features to the Swiss patent system. The preliminary draft of the revised Patents Ordinance implements these legislative amendments and regulates the details of the new patent granting procedure. This includes a mandatory search on the state of the art for all patent applications, an optional examination of the invention for novely and inventive step and the acceptance of technical documents in English.

The Patents Ordinance, which came into force on 1 January 1978, has been completely revised on this occasion:

• Many of its provisions, in particular in the international context of patent law, do not deal with today’s need to submit, manage and store as many documents as possible electronically. The amendments proposed in the preliminary draft will remove existing barriers to digitalisation and facilitate electronic communication with the IPI and electronic data management. At the same time, the draft lays the foundations for the IPI to take further digitalisation steps in future.
• The patent granting procedure has also been streamlined, and applicants will have new opportunities to speed up their applications. Additionally, some of the provisions have been aligned with those of the European Patent Convention and the Trade Mark Protection Ordinance. This will result in numerous technical simplifications and improvements for applicants.
• The structure of the current ordinance is outdated and the numerous partial revisions have made it unclear. The proposed preliminary draft eliminates these shortcomings and adapts the Patents Ordinance to the current requirements set out in the Federal Legislative Directives.

The ordinance will be submitted for public consultation so that all interested parties are informed and have the opportunity to comment. The consultation period will start on 30 April 2025 and continue until 22 August 2025.