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

¹ If the pat­ent ap­plic­ant or the pro­pri­et­or of the pat­ent fails to ob­serve a time lim­it pre­scribed by le­gis­la­tion or a time lim­it set by the IPI, he may file a re­quest for fur­ther pro­cessing with the IPI.¹⁰³

² He must file the re­quest with­in two months of re­ceiv­ing no­tice from the IPI of fail­ure to ob­serve the time lim­it, and six months at the latest from the ex­piry of the said time lim­it.¹⁰⁴ He must also carry out in full, with­in these time lim­its, the omit­ted act, sup­ple­ment where ne­ces­sary the pat­ent ap­plic­a­tion and pay the fee for fur­ther pro­cessing.

³ Ac­cept­ance of the re­quest for fur­ther pro­cessing has the ef­fect of restor­ing the situ­ation that would have res­ul­ted from car­ry­ing out the act in good time. Art­icle 48 re­mains re­served.

⁴ Fur­ther pro­cessing is ruled out in the case of fail­ure to ob­serve:

a.

time lim­its that do not have to be ob­served vis-à-vis the IPI;

b.

time lim­its for fil­ing a re­quest for fur­ther pro­cessing (para. 2);

c.

time lim­its for fil­ing a re­quest for re-es­tab­lish­ment of rights (Art. 47 para. 2);

d.

time lim­its for fil­ing a pat­ent ap­plic­a­tion ac­com­pan­ied by a claim for the right of pri­or­ity and for the de­clar­a­tion of pri­or­ity (Art. 17 and 19);

e.¹⁰⁵

…

f.

the time lim­it for the modi­fic­a­tion of tech­nic­al doc­u­ments (Art. 58 para. 1);

g.¹⁰⁶

…

h.¹⁰⁷

time lim­its for ap­ply­ing for the grant of a sup­ple­ment­ary pro­tec­tion cer­ti­fic­ate (Art. 140f para. 1, Art. 146 para. 2, and Art. 147 para. 3) or to ex­tend its valid­ity (Art. 140o para. 1) and to is­sue a pae­di­at­ric sup­ple­ment­ary pro­tec­tion cer­ti­fic­ate (Art. 140v para. 1);

i.

any oth­er time lim­it laid down by or­din­ance where fail­ure to com­ply with that time lim­it ex­cludes fur­ther pro­cessing.