Federal Act
on the Status and Tasks of the
Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property
(IPIA)

¹ The Swiss Fed­er­al In­sti­tute of In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­erty (IPI)⁴ is a pub­lic law in­sti­tu­tion of the Con­fed­er­a­tion with its own leg­al per­son­al­ity.

² The IPI is autonom­ous in its or­gan­isa­tion and op­er­a­tion­al man­age­ment; it keeps its own ac­counts.

³ The IPI is run in ac­cord­ance with busi­ness prin­ciples.

¹ The IPI shall ful­fil the fol­low­ing tasks:

a.⁵

It shall pre­pare le­gis­la­tion on pat­ents for in­ven­tions, designs, copy­right and re­lated rights, to­po­graph­ies of semi­con­duct­or products, trade marks and in­dic­a­tions of source, pub­lic coats of arms and oth­er pub­lic signs as well as all oth­er le­gis­lat­ive en­act­ments in the field of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty, provided that they do not fall un­der the com­pet­ence of oth­er ad­min­is­trat­ive units of the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

b.

It shall im­ple­ment, in ac­cord­ance with the spe­cial le­gis­la­tion, the le­gis­lat­ive acts un­der let­ter a as well as in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies in the field of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty.

c.

It shall ad­vise the Fed­er­al Coun­cil and the oth­er fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies on mat­ters of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty in the pub­lic sec­tor.

d.

It shall rep­res­ent Switzer­land with re­gard to in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions and con­ven­tions in the field of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty in col­lab­or­a­tion with oth­er ad­min­is­trat­ive units of the Con­fed­er­a­tion where re­quired.

e.

It shall play a role in rep­res­ent­ing Switzer­land with re­gard to oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions and con­ven­tions, in­so­far as these also con­cern in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty.

f.

It shall par­ti­cip­ate in tech­nic­al co­oper­a­tion in the field of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty.

g.

It shall provide ser­vices in its field of com­pet­ence based on private law; in par­tic­u­lar, it shall provide in­form­a­tion on in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights sys­tems, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights and the state of the art.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may as­sign fur­ther tasks to the IPI; Art­icles 13 and 14 ap­ply.⁶

³ The IPI shall work with the European Pat­ent Or­gan­isa­tion, with oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions and with do­mest­ic and for­eign or­gan­isa­tions.

^3bis In per­form­ing the tasks un­der para­graph 1 let­ter f, the IPI may con­clude in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies of lim­ited scope. In this re­gard, it shall co­ordin­ate with oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies in­volved in in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion.⁷

⁴ It may use the ser­vices of oth­er ad­min­is­trat­ive units of the Con­fed­er­a­tion in re­turn for re­mu­ner­a­tion.

¹ The gov­ern­ing bod­ies of the IPI are:

a.

the In­sti­tute Coun­cil;

b.

the Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al;

c.

the aud­it­or.

² They are ap­poin­ted by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

¹ The In­sti­tute Coun­cil con­sists of the pres­id­ent and eight oth­er mem­bers.

² It shall ap­prove the an­nu­al re­port, the an­nu­al fin­an­cial state­ments and the IPI’s budget.

³ It shall sub­mit the fee reg­u­la­tions to the Fed­er­al Coun­cil for ap­prov­al.⁸

⁴ It shall de­term­ine the com­pos­i­tion of the Ex­ec­ut­ive Board.

⁵ Art­icle 6a para­graphs 1–5 of the Fed­er­al Per­son­nel Act of 24 March 2000⁹ ap­plies by ana­logy to the re­mu­ner­a­tion of the mem­bers of the In­sti­tute Coun­cil and oth­er con­trac­tu­al con­di­tions agreed with these per­sons.¹⁰

¹ In per­form­ing sov­er­eign activ­it­ies, the Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al shall be bound by the in­struc­tions of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil or the com­pet­ent de­part­ment; this is without pre­ju­dice to Art­icle 1 para­graph 2 and the spe­cial le­gis­la­tion.

² The Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al shall preside over the Ex­ec­ut­ive Board and re­port an­nu­ally to the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity on the activ­it­ies of the IPI.

The aud­it­or shall audit the ac­counts and re­port to the In­sti­tute Coun­cil.

¹ The Ex­ec­ut­ive Board shall be re­spons­ible for the man­age­ment of the IPI un­less the In­sti­tute Coun­cil is ex­pressly re­spons­ible un­der Art­icle 4 or Art­icle 8 para­graph 3.

² It shall pre­pare the an­nu­al re­port, the fin­an­cial state­ments and the budget every year.

¹ The IPI shall em­ploy its per­son­nel in ac­cord­ance with pub­lic law; the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall en­act the ne­ces­sary pro­vi­sions.

² The IPI shall have full com­pet­ence in em­ploy­ing its per­son­nel.

³ The terms of em­ploy­ment of the mem­bers of the Ex­ec­ut­ive Board shall be set by the In­sti­tute Coun­cil. Art­icle 6a para­graphs 1–5 of the Fed­er­al Act of 24 March 2000¹¹ on the Per­son­nel of the Swiss Con­fed­er­a­tion ap­plies by ana­logy¹².

¹ The IPI shall be su­per­vised by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

² The fore­go­ing is without pre­ju­dice to the stat­utory powers of the Swiss Fed­er­al Audit Of­fice and the par­lia­ment­ary over­sight of the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The IPI shall plan its op­er­a­tions and de­vel­op­ment by means of the fol­low­ing in­stru­ments:

a.

the mis­sion state­ment;

b.

a rolling four-year plan;

c.

the an­nu­al budget.

¹ The IPI holds a cur­rent ac­count with the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

² The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall grant loans to the IPI at mar­ket in­terest rates to en­sure its li­quid­ity.

³ The IPI shall place its sur­plus li­quid­ity with the Con­fed­er­a­tion at mar­ket in­terest rates.

The IPI’s op­er­at­ing funds shall con­sist of the fees for its sov­er­eign activ­it­ies and re­mu­ner­a­tion for ser­vices.

¹ The IPI shall charge fees in con­nec­tion with the grant­ing and main­ten­ance of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights, the keep­ing and pub­lic­a­tion of re­gisters, the grant­ing of au­thor­isa­tions, and the su­per­vi­sion of col­lect­ive rights man­age­ment or­gan­isa­tions and leg­ally re­quired pub­lic­a­tions.

² …¹⁴

³ The IPI’s fee reg­u­la­tions are sub­ject to ap­prov­al by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

Re­mu­ner­a­tion for ser­vices provided by the IPI shall be based on mar­ket rates; the IPI shall pub­lish the re­spect­ive ap­plic­able tar­iffs.

¹ Any profit made by the IPI shall be used to cre­ate re­serves.

² The re­serves shall be used by the IPI to fin­ance fu­ture in­vest­ments; they must not ex­ceed an amount com­men­sur­ate with the needs of the IPI.

¹ The IPI shall be ex­empt from tax by the Con­fed­er­a­tion, the can­tons and the com­munes.

² The fore­go­ing is without pre­ju­dice to fed­er­al le­gis­la­tion on:

a.

value ad­ded tax for re­mu­ner­a­tion un­der Art­icle 14;

b.

with­hold­ing tax and stamp du­ties.

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment date:¹⁹ 1 Janu­ary 1996
for Art­icles 3 and 4 para­graphs 1, 2 and 4: 15 Novem­ber 1995
for Art­icle 4 para­graph 3 and 13 para­graph 3: 1 Janu­ary 1997