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

¹ Any per­son may bring an ac­tion be­fore the court to be gran­ted a non-ex­clus­ive li­cence for the man­u­fac­ture of pat­ent-pro­tec­ted phar­ma­ceut­ic­al products and for their ex­port to a coun­try that has in­suf­fi­cient or no pro­duc­tion ca­pa­city of its own in the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al sec­tor and which re­quires these products to com­bat pub­lic health prob­lems, in par­tic­u­lar those re­lated to HIV/AIDS, tuber­cu­los­is, mal­aria and oth­er epi­dem­ics (be­ne­fi­ciary coun­try).

² Coun­tries that have de­clared in the World Trade Or­gan­iz­a­tion (WTO) that they wholly or partly re­nounce their claim to a li­cence in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 are ex­cluded from be­ing be­ne­fi­ciary coun­tries in ac­cord­ance with the terms of their de­clar­a­tion. All oth­er coun­tries that ful­fil the re­quire­ments of para­graph 1 may be be­ne­fi­ciary coun­tries.

³ The li­cence in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 is lim­ited to the pro­duc­tion of the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al product in the quant­ity that meets the re­quire­ments of the be­ne­fi­ciary coun­try; the total quant­ity must be ex­por­ted to the be­ne­fi­ciary coun­try.

⁴ The own­er of the li­cence in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1, as well as any man­u­fac­turer that pro­duces products un­der li­cence, must en­sure that they are clearly iden­ti­fied as products that have been pro­duced un­der a li­cence in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1, and that the products are dis­tin­guished by their pack­aging or by their spe­cial col­our­ing or shape from pat­ent-pro­tec­ted products, provided this does not have a sig­ni­fic­ant im­pact on the price of the products in the be­ne­fi­ciary coun­try.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the re­quire­ments for the grant of li­cences in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1. In par­tic­u­lar, it shall stip­u­late the in­form­a­tion or no­ti­fic­a­tions the re­spons­ible court must pos­sess in or­der to be able to de­cide on the grant of the li­cence in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1, and shall reg­u­late the meas­ures in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 4.