Federal Act on the Protection of Designs
(Designs Act, DesA)

¹ On com­plaint from the right hold­er, any per­son who wil­fully in­fringes the design right of an­oth­er is li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing one year or a mon­et­ary pen­alty if he:²¹

a.

un­law­fully uses the design;

b.

par­ti­cip­ates in, en­cour­ages or fa­cil­it­ates such un­au­thor­ised use;

c.

re­fuses to provide the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity with in­form­a­tion on the ori­gin and ex­tent of un­law­fully man­u­fac­tured items in his pos­ses­sion and to name the re­cip­i­ents and dis­close the ex­tent of any dis­tri­bu­tion to com­mer­cial cus­tom­ers.

² If the of­fend­er acts for com­mer­cial gain, he shall be pro­sec­uted ex of­fi­cio. The pen­alty is a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing five years or a mon­et­ary pen­alty. The cus­todi­al sen­tence shall be com­bined with a mon­et­ary pen­alty.²²