Federal Act
on the Protection of Trade Marks and Indications of Source
(Trade Mark Protection Act, TmPA)

¹ In­dic­a­tions of source are dir­ect or in­dir­ect ref­er­ences to the geo­graph­ic­al ori­gin of goods or ser­vices, in­clud­ing ref­er­ences to their char­ac­ter­ist­ics or the qual­ity as­so­ci­ated with their ori­gin.

² Geo­graph­ic­al names and signs that are not un­der­stood by the rel­ev­ant pub­lic as in­dic­at­ing a cer­tain ori­gin of the goods or ser­vices, are not con­sidered in­dic­a­tions of source with­in the mean­ing of para­graph 1.

³ It is pro­hib­ited to use:

a.

in­cor­rect in­dic­a­tions of source;

b.

de­nom­in­a­tions that may be con­fused with an in­cor­rect in­dic­a­tion of source;

c.⁵²

a name, a com­pany name, an ad­dress or a trade mark as­so­ci­ated with goods or ser­vices of a dif­fer­ent ori­gin where this could be mis­lead­ing.

^3bis Where in­dic­a­tions of source are used with ad­di­tions such as «kind», «type», «style» or «im­it­a­tion», the same re­quire­ments must be ful­filled that ap­ply to the use of in­dic­a­tions of source without these ad­di­tions.⁵³

^3ter In­dic­a­tions re­gard­ing re­search or design or oth­er spe­cif­ic activ­it­ies as­so­ci­ated with the product may only be used if this activ­ity takes place en­tirely at the spe­cified loc­a­tion.⁵⁴

⁴ Re­gion­al or loc­al in­dic­a­tions of source for ser­vices are con­sidered to be cor­rect if such ser­vices sat­is­fy the cri­ter­ia of ori­gin for the coun­try con­cerned as a whole.