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

¹ If the sub­ject-mat­ter of the pat­ent ap­plic­a­tion does not fall with­in Art­icles 1, 1a, 1b and 2 or does so only in part, the IPI shall in­form the pat­ent ap­plic­ant ac­cord­ingly, stat­ing the reas­ons, and shall set him a time lim­it with­in which to re­spond.¹³⁸

² If the pat­ent ap­plic­a­tion does not meet the oth­er re­quire­ments of this Act or the Or­din­ance, the IPI shall set a time lim­it for the pat­ent ap­plic­ant by which the de­fi­cien­cies must be remedied.¹³⁹

³ …¹⁴⁰

⁴ The In­sti­tute shall not ex­am­ine wheth­er the in­ven­tion is new or wheth­er it is ob­vi­ous hav­ing re­gard to the state of the art.¹⁴¹

⁵ In re­turn for the pay­ment of a fee, the ap­plic­ant may:

a.

in­struct the IPI to provide a re­port on the state of the art with­in 14 months of the fil­ing date, or, if pri­or­ity has been claimed, of the pri­or­ity date; or

b.

re­quest the IPI to ar­range an in­ter­na­tion­al-type search with­in 6 months of the fil­ing date of a first fil­ing.¹⁴²

⁶ If no cla­ri­fic­a­tion has been car­ried out in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 5, any per­son en­titled to in­spect the dossier in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 65 may, in re­turn for the pay­ment of a fee, in­struct the IPI to provide a re­port on the state of the art.¹⁴³