Federal Act
on Patents for Inventions
(Patents Act, PatA)¹

¹ If an in­ven­tion that relates to the man­u­fac­ture or use of bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al can­not be suf­fi­ciently de­scribed, then the de­scrip­tion must be com­pleted by de­pos­it­ing a sample of the bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al and, in the de­scrip­tion, by provid­ing de­tails of the es­sen­tial char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al as well as a ref­er­ence to the de­pos­it.

² If, in the case of an in­ven­tion that relates to bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al as a product, the pro­duc­tion pro­cess can­not be suf­fi­ciently de­scribed, then the de­scrip­tion must be com­pleted or re­placed by de­pos­it­ing a sample of the bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al and, in the de­scrip­tion, by a ref­er­ence to the de­pos­it.

³ The in­ven­tion is deemed to be dis­closed in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 50 only if the sample of the bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al has been de­pos­ited at the latest on the fil­ing date with a re­cog­nised de­pos­it­ary in­sti­tu­tion and the pat­ent ap­plic­a­tion as ori­gin­ally filed con­tains de­tails of the bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al and ref­er­ence to its de­pos­it.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late in de­tail the re­quire­ments for de­pos­it­ing samples, for the de­tails of bio­lo­gic­al ma­ter­i­al and for the ref­er­ence to the de­pos­it, to­geth­er with ac­cess to the samples de­pos­ited.