Federal Act
on Unfair Competition
(Unfair Competition Act, UCA)

¹ A per­son acts un­fairly if they:

a.

dis­par­age oth­ers, their goods, work, ser­vices, prices or their busi­ness re­la­tion­ships by mak­ing in­cor­rect, mis­lead­ing or un­ne­ces­sar­ily harm­ful state­ments;

b.⁴

provide in­cor­rect or mis­lead­ing in­form­a­tion about them­selves, their busi­ness, their busi­ness name, their goods, works or ser­vices, their prices, their volume in stock, the nature of the sales trans­ac­tion or about their busi­ness re­la­tion­ships or be­ne­fit third parties in com­pet­i­tion through such con­duct;

c.

use in­cor­rect titles or pro­fes­sion­al des­ig­na­tions that are likely to give the im­pres­sion that they hold spe­cial qual­i­fic­a­tions or skills;

d.

take meas­ures that are likely to cause con­fu­sion with the goods, works, ser­vices or the busi­ness op­er­a­tions of oth­ers;

e.

com­pare them­selves, their goods, works, ser­vices or their prices in an in­cor­rect, mis­lead­ing, un­ne­ces­sar­ily dis­par­aging or pla­gi­ar­ist­ic way with oth­ers, their goods, works, ser­vices or prices or be­ne­fit third parties in com­pet­i­tion through such con­duct;

f.

re­peatedly of­fer se­lec­ted goods, works or ser­vices at be­low the cost price, give spe­cial em­phas­is to these of­fers in ad­vert­ising and thus de­ceive the cus­tom­er as to their own or their com­pet­it­ors’ per­form­ance; de­cep­tion is pre­sumed if the sale price is less than the cost price of com­par­able pur­chases of sim­il­ar goods, works or ser­vices; if the de­fend­ant proves the ac­tu­al cost price, this price is de­cis­ive in the as­sess­ment;

g.

de­ceive the cus­tom­er as to the ac­tu­al value of the of­fer by adding premi­ums;

h.

ad­versely af­fect the cus­tom­er’s free­dom to de­cide by us­ing par­tic­u­larly ag­gress­ive sales meth­ods;

i.

con­ceal the con­di­tion, quant­ity, pur­pose, use or dan­ger­ous­ness of goods, works or ser­vices and thereby de­ceive the cus­tom­er;

k.⁵

fail to state their busi­ness name clearly in pub­lic state­ments about con­sumer cred­it or fail to in­dic­ate clearly the net amount of the cred­it or the over­all costs of the cred­it and the ef­fect­ive an­nu­al in­terest rate;

l.⁶

fail to state their busi­ness name clearly in pub­lic state­ments about con­sumer cred­it to pay for goods or ser­vices or fail to in­dic­ate clearly the cash price, the price to be paid un­der the cred­it agree­ment, and the ef­fect­ive an­nu­al in­terest rate;

m.⁷

of­fer or con­clude a con­sumer cred­it agree­ment in the course of a busi­ness activ­ity and in do­ing so use con­tract forms that con­tain in­com­plete or in­cor­rect in­form­a­tion about the sub­ject mat­ter of the con­tract, the price, the pay­ment terms, the dur­a­tion of the con­tract, the cus­tom­er’s right to with­draw from or ter­min­ate the con­tract or the cus­tom­er's right to make early re­pay­ment of the out­stand­ing debt;

n.⁸

fail to state in pub­lic state­ments about con­sumer cred­it (let. k) or con­sumer cred­it to pay for goods or ser­vices (let. l) that the grant­ing of cred­it is pro­hib­ited if it leads to the con­sumer’s over­indebted­ness;

o.⁹

send or ar­range to be sent mass ad­vert­ising without dir­ect con­nec­tion with any re­ques­ted con­tent by tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion and in do­ing so fail to ob­tain the pri­or con­sent of the cus­tom­er, or to in­dic­ate the cor­rect sender or a simple and free of charge op­tion of re­fus­al; any per­son who re­ceives con­tact de­tails of a cus­tom­er when selling goods, works or ser­vices, and who in­dic­ates the op­tion of re­fus­al when do­ing so, does not act un­fairly if they send that same cus­tom­er mass ad­vert­ising for their own sim­il­ar goods, works or ser­vices without the cus­tom­er's con­sent;

p.¹⁰

so­li­cit entries in dir­ect­or­ies of any nature us­ing of­fer forms, cor­rec­tion pro­pos­als or sim­il­ar or so­li­cit ad­vert­ising or­ders or of­fer such entries or ad­vert­ising or­ders dir­ectly without in­dic­at­ing the fol­low­ing in large print, in a prom­in­ent place and in un­der­stand­able lan­guage:

1.

that the of­fer is private in char­ac­ter and sub­ject to a charge,

2.

the dur­a­tion of the con­tract,

3.

the total price for that dur­a­tion, and

4.

the geo­graph­ic­al spread, form, min­im­um print run and the latest date of pub­lic­a­tion;

q.¹¹

send in­voices for entries in dir­ect­or­ies of any nature or for ad­vert­ising or­ders, without be­ing giv­en a cor­res­pond­ing or­der be­fore­hand;

r.¹²

prom­ise to sup­ply goods, pay bo­nuses or provide oth­er ser­vices on con­di­tions that are ad­vant­age­ous to the re­cip­i­ent primar­ily if the re­cip­i­ent re­cruits oth­er per­sons and less if the re­cip­i­ent sells or makes use of the goods or ser­vices (snow­ball, ava­lanche or pyr­am­id schemes);

s.¹³

of­fer goods, works or ser­vices on­line and in do­ing so fail:

1.

to provide clear and com­plete de­tails of their iden­tity and their con­tact ad­dress in­clud­ing their email ad­dress,

2.

to in­dic­ate the in­di­vidu­al tech­nic­al steps that lead to a con­tract be­ing con­cluded,

3.

to provide suit­able tech­nic­al means for identi­fy­ing and cor­rect­ing in­put er­rors be­fore sub­mit­ting the or­der,

4.

to provide im­me­di­ate on­line con­firm­a­tion of the cus­tom­er's or­der;

t.¹⁴

prom­ise a prize as part of a com­pet­i­tion or a prize draw the re­demp­tion of which is con­di­tion­al on the use of a chargeable value-ad­ded ser­vice num­ber, the pay­ment of com­pens­a­tion for ex­penses, the pur­chase of a good or ser­vice or par­ti­cip­a­tion in a sales event, pro­mo­tion­al trip or a fur­ther prize draw

u.¹⁵

fail to ob­serve a note in the tele­phone dir­ect­ory that a cus­tom­er does not wish to re­ceive ad­vert­ising from per­sons with whom they have no busi­ness re­la­tion­ship and that their data may not be passed on for the pur­poses of dir­ect ad­vert­ising; cus­tom­ers without a dir­ect­ory entry shall be treated in the same way as cus­tom­ers with a dir­ect­ory entry and note;

v.¹⁶

make ad­vert­ising calls without dis­play­ing a tele­phone num­ber which is entered in the tele­phone dir­ect­ory and which they are en­titled to use;

w.¹⁷

make use of in­form­a­tion that has come to their know­ledge as a res­ult of an in­fringe­ment of let­ter u or v.

² Para­graph 1 let­ter s does not ap­ply to voice tele­phony and to con­tracts con­cluded ex­clus­ively by the ex­change of elec­tron­ic mail or by com­par­able in­di­vidu­al com­mu­nic­a­tion.¹⁸