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

¹ The li­cences provided for in Art­icles 36–40dare gran­ted only if ef­forts by the ap­plic­ant to ob­tain a con­trac­tu­al li­cence on ap­pro­pri­ate mar­ket terms with­in a reas­on­able peri­od of time have been un­suc­cess­ful; in the case of a li­cence in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 40d, a peri­od of 30 work­ing days is re­garded as reas­on­able. Such ef­forts are not re­quired in situ­ations of na­tion­al emer­gency or oth­er cir­cum­stances of ex­treme ur­gency or in cases of pub­lic non-com­mer­cial use.

² The scope and term of the li­cence are lim­ited to the pur­pose for which it has been gran­ted.

³ The li­cence may only be trans­ferred with that part of the en­ter­prise which uses the li­cence. This also ap­plies to sub-li­cences.

⁴ The li­cence is primar­ily gran­ted for sup­ply­ing the do­mest­ic mar­ket. Art­icle 40d re­mains re­served.

⁵ The pro­pri­et­or of the pat­ent has the right to ap­pro­pri­ate re­mu­ner­a­tion. In as­sess­ing the re­mu­ner­a­tion, the cir­cum­stances of the in­di­vidu­al case and the eco­nom­ic value of the li­cence are taken in­to ac­count. In the case of a li­cence un­der Art­icle 40d, the re­mu­ner­a­tion is de­term­ined by tak­ing in­to ac­count the eco­nom­ic value of the li­cence in the im­port­ing coun­try, its level of de­vel­op­ment and the ur­gency in pub­lic health and hu­man­it­ari­an terms. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the meth­od of cal­cu­la­tion.

⁶ The court shall de­cide on the grant and re­voc­a­tion of li­cences, on their scope and dur­a­tion as well as on the re­mu­ner­a­tion pay­able. In par­tic­u­lar, it shall re­voke an en­titled per­son’s li­cence on re­quest if the cir­cum­stances that led to its be­ing gran­ted no longer ap­ply and it is not ex­pec­ted that they will arise again. Ap­pro­pri­ate pro­tec­tion of the leg­al in­terests of the en­titled per­son re­mains re­served. Where a li­cence is gran­ted un­der Art­icle 40d, leg­al rem­ed­ies have no sus­pens­ive ef­fect.