Federal Act
on Unfair Competition
(Unfair Competition Act, UCA)

This Act aims to guar­an­tee fair and genu­ine com­pet­i­tion in the in­terests of all con­cerned.

Any con­duct or busi­ness prac­tice that is mis­lead­ing or which oth­er­wise vi­ol­ates the prin­ciple of good faith such that it in­flu­ences the re­la­tion­ship between com­pet­it­ors or between sup­pli­ers and cus­tom­ers is un­fair and un­law­ful.

¹ A per­son acts un­fairly if they:

a.

dis­par­age oth­ers, their goods, work, ser­vices, prices or their busi­ness re­la­tion­ships by mak­ing in­cor­rect, mis­lead­ing or un­ne­ces­sar­ily harm­ful state­ments;

b.⁴

provide in­cor­rect or mis­lead­ing in­form­a­tion about them­selves, their busi­ness, their busi­ness name, their goods, works or ser­vices, their prices, their volume in stock, the nature of the sales trans­ac­tion or about their busi­ness re­la­tion­ships or be­ne­fit third parties in com­pet­i­tion through such con­duct;

c.

use in­cor­rect titles or pro­fes­sion­al des­ig­na­tions that are likely to give the im­pres­sion that they hold spe­cial qual­i­fic­a­tions or skills;

d.

take meas­ures that are likely to cause con­fu­sion with the goods, works, ser­vices or the busi­ness op­er­a­tions of oth­ers;

e.

com­pare them­selves, their goods, works, ser­vices or their prices in an in­cor­rect, mis­lead­ing, un­ne­ces­sar­ily dis­par­aging or pla­gi­ar­ist­ic way with oth­ers, their goods, works, ser­vices or prices or be­ne­fit third parties in com­pet­i­tion through such con­duct;

f.

re­peatedly of­fer se­lec­ted goods, works or ser­vices at be­low the cost price, give spe­cial em­phas­is to these of­fers in ad­vert­ising and thus de­ceive the cus­tom­er as to their own or their com­pet­it­ors’ per­form­ance; de­cep­tion is pre­sumed if the sale price is less than the cost price of com­par­able pur­chases of sim­il­ar goods, works or ser­vices; if the de­fend­ant proves the ac­tu­al cost price, this price is de­cis­ive in the as­sess­ment;

g.

de­ceive the cus­tom­er as to the ac­tu­al value of the of­fer by adding premi­ums;

h.

ad­versely af­fect the cus­tom­er’s free­dom to de­cide by us­ing par­tic­u­larly ag­gress­ive sales meth­ods;

i.

con­ceal the con­di­tion, quant­ity, pur­pose, use or dan­ger­ous­ness of goods, works or ser­vices and thereby de­ceive the cus­tom­er;

k.⁵

fail to state their busi­ness name clearly in pub­lic state­ments about con­sumer cred­it or fail to in­dic­ate clearly the net amount of the cred­it or the over­all costs of the cred­it and the ef­fect­ive an­nu­al in­terest rate;

l.⁶

fail to state their busi­ness name clearly in pub­lic state­ments about con­sumer cred­it to pay for goods or ser­vices or fail to in­dic­ate clearly the cash price, the price to be paid un­der the cred­it agree­ment, and the ef­fect­ive an­nu­al in­terest rate;

m.⁷

of­fer or con­clude a con­sumer cred­it agree­ment in the course of a busi­ness activ­ity and in do­ing so use con­tract forms that con­tain in­com­plete or in­cor­rect in­form­a­tion about the sub­ject mat­ter of the con­tract, the price, the pay­ment terms, the dur­a­tion of the con­tract, the cus­tom­er’s right to with­draw from or ter­min­ate the con­tract or the cus­tom­er's right to make early re­pay­ment of the out­stand­ing debt;

n.⁸

fail to state in pub­lic state­ments about con­sumer cred­it (let. k) or con­sumer cred­it to pay for goods or ser­vices (let. l) that the grant­ing of cred­it is pro­hib­ited if it leads to the con­sumer’s over­indebted­ness;

o.⁹

send or ar­range to be sent mass ad­vert­ising without dir­ect con­nec­tion with any re­ques­ted con­tent by tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion and in do­ing so fail to ob­tain the pri­or con­sent of the cus­tom­er, or to in­dic­ate the cor­rect sender or a simple and free of charge op­tion of re­fus­al; any per­son who re­ceives con­tact de­tails of a cus­tom­er when selling goods, works or ser­vices, and who in­dic­ates the op­tion of re­fus­al when do­ing so, does not act un­fairly if they send that same cus­tom­er mass ad­vert­ising for their own sim­il­ar goods, works or ser­vices without the cus­tom­er's con­sent;

p.¹⁰

so­li­cit entries in dir­ect­or­ies of any nature us­ing of­fer forms, cor­rec­tion pro­pos­als or sim­il­ar or so­li­cit ad­vert­ising or­ders or of­fer such entries or ad­vert­ising or­ders dir­ectly without in­dic­at­ing the fol­low­ing in large print, in a prom­in­ent place and in un­der­stand­able lan­guage:

1.

that the of­fer is private in char­ac­ter and sub­ject to a charge,

2.

the dur­a­tion of the con­tract,

3.

the total price for that dur­a­tion, and

4.

the geo­graph­ic­al spread, form, min­im­um print run and the latest date of pub­lic­a­tion;

q.¹¹

send in­voices for entries in dir­ect­or­ies of any nature or for ad­vert­ising or­ders, without be­ing giv­en a cor­res­pond­ing or­der be­fore­hand;

r.¹²

prom­ise to sup­ply goods, pay bo­nuses or provide oth­er ser­vices on con­di­tions that are ad­vant­age­ous to the re­cip­i­ent primar­ily if the re­cip­i­ent re­cruits oth­er per­sons and less if the re­cip­i­ent sells or makes use of the goods or ser­vices (snow­ball, ava­lanche or pyr­am­id schemes);

s.¹³

of­fer goods, works or ser­vices on­line and in do­ing so fail:

1.

to provide clear and com­plete de­tails of their iden­tity and their con­tact ad­dress in­clud­ing their email ad­dress,

2.

to in­dic­ate the in­di­vidu­al tech­nic­al steps that lead to a con­tract be­ing con­cluded,

3.

to provide suit­able tech­nic­al means for identi­fy­ing and cor­rect­ing in­put er­rors be­fore sub­mit­ting the or­der,

4.

to provide im­me­di­ate on­line con­firm­a­tion of the cus­tom­er's or­der;

t.¹⁴

prom­ise a prize as part of a com­pet­i­tion or a prize draw the re­demp­tion of which is con­di­tion­al on the use of a chargeable value-ad­ded ser­vice num­ber, the pay­ment of com­pens­a­tion for ex­penses, the pur­chase of a good or ser­vice or par­ti­cip­a­tion in a sales event, pro­mo­tion­al trip or a fur­ther prize draw

u.¹⁵

fail to ob­serve a note in the tele­phone dir­ect­ory that a cus­tom­er does not wish to re­ceive ad­vert­ising from per­sons with whom they have no busi­ness re­la­tion­ship and that their data may not be passed on for the pur­poses of dir­ect ad­vert­ising; cus­tom­ers without a dir­ect­ory entry shall be treated in the same way as cus­tom­ers with a dir­ect­ory entry and note;

v.¹⁶

make ad­vert­ising calls without dis­play­ing a tele­phone num­ber which is entered in the tele­phone dir­ect­ory and which they are en­titled to use;

w.¹⁷

make use of in­form­a­tion that has come to their know­ledge as a res­ult of an in­fringe­ment of let­ter u or v.

² Para­graph 1 let­ter s does not ap­ply to voice tele­phony and to con­tracts con­cluded ex­clus­ively by the ex­change of elec­tron­ic mail or by com­par­able in­di­vidu­al com­mu­nic­a­tion.¹⁸

¹A per­son acts un­fairly to­wards a cus­tom­er in Switzer­land in par­tic­u­lar if, in long-dis­tance trad­ing, without ob­ject­ive jus­ti­fic­a­tion, on the basis of the cus­tom­er’s na­tion­al­ity, place of res­id­ence, place of es­tab­lish­ment, the re­gistered of­fice of the cus­tom­er’s pay­ment ser­vice pro­vider or the place of is­sue of the cus­tom­er’s means of pay­ment:

a.

they dis­crim­in­ate in re­la­tion to the price or terms of pay­ment;

b.

they block or re­strict the cus­tom­er’s ac­cess to an on­line portal; or

c.

they re­dir­ect the cus­tom­er to a ver­sion of the on­line portal oth­er than the one ori­gin­ally vis­ited without the cus­tom­er’s con­sent.

² This pro­vi­sion does not ap­ply to non-eco­nom­ic ser­vices of gen­er­al in­terest; fin­an­cial ser­vices; elec­tron­ic com­mu­nic­a­tion ser­vices; pub­lic trans­port ser­vices; ser­vices provided by tem­por­ary em­ploy­ment agen­cies; health­care ser­vices; games of chance that re­quire a mon­et­ary stake, in­clud­ing lot­ter­ies, games of chance in casi­nos and bet­ting; private se­cur­ity ser­vices; so­cial ser­vices of any nature; ser­vices con­nec­ted with the ex­er­cise of of­fi­cial au­thor­ity; activ­it­ies of not­ar­ies and court of­ficers ap­poin­ted by pub­lic au­thor­it­ies; au­dio-visu­al ser­vices.

A per­son acts un­fairly in par­tic­u­lar if they:

a.

in­duce a cus­tom­er to breach a con­tract in or­der to enter in­to a con­tract with that cus­tom­er;

b.²⁰

…

c.

in­duce em­ploy­ees, agents or oth­er aux­il­i­ary per­son­nel to be­tray or find out man­u­fac­tur­ing or trade secrets be­long­ing to their em­ploy­er or cli­ent;

d.²¹

in­duce a con­sumer who has entered in­to a con­sumer cred­it agree­ment to can­cel the agree­ment in or­der to enter in­to an agree­ment with that con­sumer.

¹ A per­son acts un­fairly if they:

a.

of­fer, prom­ise or grant an un­due ad­vant­age to an em­ploy­ee, a com­pany mem­ber, an agent or an­oth­er aux­il­i­ary per­son of a third party in the private sec­tor in con­nec­tion with the lat­ter's of­fi­cial or busi­ness activ­ity in re­turn for an act or omis­sion in breach of the lat­ter's duty or sub­ject to their dis­cre­tion for the former's be­ne­fit or for the be­ne­fit of a third party;

b.²³

as an em­ploy­ee, a com­pany mem­ber, an agent or an­oth­er aux­il­i­ary per­son of a third party in the private sec­tor so­li­cit the of­fer or prom­ise of or ac­cept an un­due ad­vant­age in con­nec­tion with their of­fi­cial or busi­ness activ­ity in re­turn for an act or omis­sion in breach of their duty or sub­ject to their dis­cre­tion for their own be­ne­fit or for the be­ne­fit of a third party.

² Ad­vant­ages con­trac­tu­ally ap­proved by the third party and minor, so­cially cus­tom­ary ad­vant­ages are not un­due ad­vant­ages.

A per­son acts un­fairly in par­tic­u­lar if they:

a.

ex­ploit a work product en­trus­ted to them, such as an of­fer, cal­cu­la­tion or plan, without au­thor­isa­tion;

b.

ex­ploit a third party’s work product, such as an of­fer, cal­cu­la­tion or plan, even though they must know that it was giv­en or made ac­cess­ible to them without au­thor­isa­tion;

c.

take over and ex­ploit an­oth­er per­son's work product that is ready for the mar­ket by means of tech­nic­al re­pro­duc­tion pro­cesses without any reas­on­able ef­fort of their own.

A per­son acts un­fairly in par­tic­u­lar if they ex­ploit or dis­close to oth­ers man­u­fac­tur­ing or trade secrets that they have found out or oth­er­wise un­law­fully ob­tained.

A per­son acts un­fairly in par­tic­u­lar if they do not com­ply with con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment that also ap­ply to com­pet­it­ors by leg­al rule or agree­ment, or which are cus­tom­ary in the pro­fes­sion or loc­a­tion con­cerned.

A per­son acts un­fairly in par­tic­u­lar if they use gen­er­al terms and con­di­tions of busi­ness that provide for a con­sid­er­able and un­jus­ti­fied im­bal­ance between con­trac­tu­al rights and con­trac­tu­al ob­lig­a­tions to the pre­ju­dice of con­sumers in a man­ner that is in breach of good faith.

A per­son acts un­fairly in par­tic­u­lar if, as the op­er­at­or of an on­line plat­form for book­ing ac­com­mod­a­tion ser­vices, they ap­ply gen­er­al terms and con­di­tions of busi­ness that re­strict, dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly, the abil­ity of ac­com­mod­a­tion busi­nesses to fix prices and make of­fers by means of par­ity clauses, in par­tic­u­lar in re­la­tion to prices, avail­ab­il­ity or con­di­tions.

¹ Any per­son who is threatened with or sus­tains dam­age to their cus­tom­er base, their cred­it or pro­fes­sion­al repu­ta­tion, their busi­ness op­er­a­tions or oth­er­wise to their eco­nom­ic in­terests as a res­ult of un­fair com­pet­i­tion may re­quest the court:

a.

to pro­hib­it im­min­ent dam­age;

b.

to re­dress ex­ist­ing dam­age;

c.

to de­term­ine the il­leg­al­ity of the dam­age if this is con­tinu­ing to have a dis­rupt­ive ef­fect.

² They may in par­tic­u­lar re­quest that no­tice of any cor­rec­tion or the judg­ment be giv­en to third parties or be pub­lished.

³ They may also bring an ac­tion pur­su­ant to the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions²⁸ for dam­ages and sat­is­fac­tion and for de­liv­ery of profits in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions on agency without au­thor­ity.

¹ The ac­tions un­der Art­icle 9 are also avail­able to cus­tom­ers whose eco­nom­ic in­terests are threatened or dam­aged by un­fair com­pet­i­tion.

² In ad­di­tion, the fol­low­ing en­tit­ies may bring ac­tions un­der Art­icle 9 para­graphs 1 and 2:

a.

pro­fes­sion­al and trade as­so­ci­ations which are au­thor­ised un­der their art­icles to safe­guard the eco­nom­ic in­terests of their mem­bers;

b.

or­gan­isa­tions of na­tion­al or re­gion­al im­port­ance which, in ac­cord­ance with their art­icles, are ded­ic­ated to con­sumer pro­tec­tion;

c.³⁰

...

³ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may also bring ac­tions un­der Art­icle 9 para­graphs 1 and 2 if it re­gards it as ne­ces­sary in or­der to pro­tect the pub­lic in­terest, and in par­tic­u­lar if:

a.

Switzer­land's repu­ta­tion abroad is threatened or dam­aged and the per­sons whose eco­nom­ic in­terests are af­fected are based abroad; or

b.

the in­terests of sev­er­al per­sons or of a group of mem­bers of an in­dustry or oth­er col­lect­ive in­terests are threatened or dam­aged.³¹

⁴ Where re­quired in or­der to pro­tect the pub­lic in­terest, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall in­form the pub­lic about un­fair prac­tices, and name the busi­nesses con­cerned. Where there is no longer a pub­lic in­terest, the pub­lic­a­tions con­cerned shall be de­leted.³²

⁵ In the case of ac­tions by the Con­fed­er­a­tion, the ap­plic­a­tion of this Act is man­dat­ory in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 18 of the Fed­er­al Act of 18 Decem­ber 1987³³ on Private In­ter­na­tion­al Law.³⁴

If em­ploy­ees or oth­er aux­il­i­ary per­sons com­pete un­fairly in the course of their of­fi­cial or busi­ness activ­it­ies, an ac­tion un­der Art­icle 9 para­graphs 1 and 2 may also be brought against their em­ploy­ers.

¹ The court may re­quire an ad­vert­iser to prove that claims in their ad­vert­ising are ac­cur­ate if this ap­pears ap­pro­pri­ate hav­ing taken ac­count of the le­git­im­ate in­terests of the ad­vert­iser and of the oth­er parties to the pro­ceed­ings.

² ...³⁷

¹ Where goods are offered for sale to con­sumers, the price that must ac­tu­ally be paid must be in­dic­ated, un­less the Fed­er­al Coun­cil provides for ex­cep­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, ex­cep­tions shall be per­mit­ted for tech­nic­al or safety reas­ons. The same ob­lig­a­tion ap­plies in the case of ser­vices des­ig­nated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the in­dic­a­tion of prices and tips.

³ …⁴⁰

¹ The quant­it­ies and prices of meas­ur­able goods and ser­vices that are offered for sale to con­sumers must be in­dic­ated and their com­par­ab­il­ity guar­an­teed by in­dic­at­ing the ba­sic price.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions com­pli­ance with which provides an ex­emp­tion from the re­quire­ment to in­dic­ate ba­sic prices.

If prices or price re­duc­tions are in­dic­ated in ad­vert­ising, their in­dic­a­tion shall be gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions is­sued by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

It is un­law­ful to do the fol­low­ing in a man­ner that is mis­lead­ing:

a.

in­dic­ate prices;

b.

in­dic­ate price re­duc­tions, or

c.

in­dic­ate oth­er prices next to the price that must ac­tu­ally be paid.

¹ The re­spons­ible can­ton­al bod­ies may ob­tain in­form­a­tion and re­quest doc­u­ments where this is re­quired to es­tab­lish the cir­cum­stances of a case.

² The ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion ap­plies to:

a.

per­sons and busi­nesses that of­fer goods for sale to con­sumers or that man­u­fac­ture, pur­chase or trade in such goods;

b.

per­sons and busi­nesses that of­fer, provide, broker or make use of ser­vices;

c.

private sec­tor or­gan­isa­tions;

d.

or­gan­isa­tions of na­tion­al or re­gion­al im­port­ance which, in ac­cord­ance with their art­icles, are ded­ic­ated to con­sumer pro­tec­tion.

³ The ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion ceases to ap­ply if the right to re­fuse to testi­fy un­der Art­icle 42 of the Fed­er­al Act of 4 Decem­ber 1947⁴² on Fed­er­al Civil Pro­ced­ure ap­plies.

⁴ The pro­vi­sions of the Crim­in­al Pro­ced­ure Code of 5 Oc­to­ber 2007⁴³ and the can­ton­al pro­vi­sions on ad­min­is­trat­ive pro­ced­ure are re­served.⁴⁴

¹ The can­tons are re­spons­ible for im­ple­ment­a­tion, the Con­fed­er­a­tion for over­sight.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions.

¹ The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for im­ple­ment­ing this Act may work with the com­pet­ent for­eign au­thor­it­ies and with in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions or bod­ies and in par­tic­u­lar co­ordin­ate sur­veys, provided:

a.

this is re­quired to com­bat un­fair busi­ness prac­tices; and

b.

the for­eign au­thor­it­ies, in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions or bod­ies are re­quired to ob­serve of­fi­cial secrecy or are sub­ject to a cor­res­pond­ing duty of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may enter in­to in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments on co­oper­a­tion with for­eign su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies to com­bat un­fair busi­ness prac­tices.

¹ The fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies re­spons­ible for im­ple­ment­ing this Act may in the con­text of their co­oper­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 21 dis­close to for­eign au­thor­it­ies and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions or bod­ies data re­lat­ing to per­sons and activ­it­ies, and in par­tic­u­lar re­lat­ing to:

a.

per­sons in­volved in an un­fair busi­ness prac­tice;

b.

the send­ing of ad­vert­ising ma­ter­i­al and oth­er doc­u­ments that in­dic­ate the ex­ist­ence of an un­fair busi­ness prac­tice;

c.

the fin­an­cial mod­al­it­ies of the trans­ac­tion;

d.

the clos­ure of post of­fice boxes.

² They may dis­close the data if the data re­cip­i­ents provide an as­sur­ance that they will grant re­cip­roc­al rights and only pro­cess data for the pur­pose of com­bat­ing un­fair busi­ness prac­tices. Art­icle 6 of the Fed­er­al Act of 19 June 1992⁴⁶ on Data Pro­tec­tion re­mains re­served.

³ If the data re­cip­i­ent is an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tion or an in­ter­na­tion­al body, they may dis­close the data without be­ing gran­ted re­cip­roc­al rights.

¹ Any per­son who wil­fully com­petes un­fairly in terms of Art­icles 3, 4, 5 or 6 shall on com­plaint be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or a mon­et­ary pen­alty.⁴⁸

² Any per­son who has the right un­der Art­icles 9 or 10 to bring civil pro­ceed­ings may file a crim­in­al com­plaint.

³ The Con­fed­er­a­tion has the rights of a private claimant in the pro­ceed­ings.⁴⁹

¹ Any per­son who wil­fully:

a.⁵⁰

breaches the duty to in­dic­ate prices (Art. 16) or to in­dic­ate the ba­sic price (Art. 16a);

b.

breaches the reg­u­la­tions on in­dic­at­ing prices in ad­vert­ising (Art. 17);

c.

in­dic­ates prices in a mis­lead­ing way (Art. 18);

d.

breaches the ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion in con­nec­tion with in­dic­at­ing prices (Art. 19);

e.⁵¹

breaches the Fed­er­al Coun­cil im­ple­ment­ing reg­u­la­tions on in­dic­at­ing prices or in­dic­at­ing the ba­sic price (Art. 16, 16a and 20),

shall be li­able to a fine not ex­ceed­ing 20 000 francs.⁵²

² If the of­fend­er acts through neg­li­gence, the pen­alty is a fine.

Of­fences in busi­nesses, by agents and such­like are gov­erned by Art­icles 6 and 7 of the Fed­er­al Act on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Crim­in­al Law of 22 March 1974⁵⁴.

¹ If do­main names or tele­phone num­bers have been used in or­der to com­mit a crim­in­al of­fence un­der Art­icle 23 in con­junc­tion with Art­icle 3 or un­der Art­icle 24 and the meas­ure con­cerned is re­quired in or­der to pre­vent fur­ther of­fences, the pub­lic pro­sec­utor or the court may or­der the fol­low­ing meas­ures without re­gard to the crim­in­al li­ab­il­ity of any spe­cif­ic per­son:

a.

the re­voc­a­tion of a second level do­main name sub­or­din­ate to an in­ter­net do­main whose ad­min­is­tra­tion is Switzer­land's re­spons­ib­il­ity;

b.

the re­voc­a­tion or the block­ing of a tele­phone num­ber for fixed-net­work ser­vices or for mo­bile tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices.

² The au­thor­ity dir­ect­ing the pro­ceed­ings may or­der the tem­por­ary block­ing of the do­main name or the tele­phone num­ber un­til the crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings have been con­cluded.

¹ Pro­sec­u­tion is the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the can­tons.

² The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall provide the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Switzer­land and the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs, Edu­ca­tion and Re­search⁵⁶ with full de­tails of all judg­ments, sum­mary pen­alty or­ders and de­cisions to dis­miss pro­ceed­ings without delay and free of charge.⁵⁷

The Fed­er­al Act of 30 Septem­ber 1943⁵⁸ on Un­fair Com­pet­i­tion is re­pealed.

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment date: 1 March 1988⁵⁹