Federal Act
on the Protection of the Swiss Coat of Arms and Other Public Signs
(Coat of Arms Protection Act, CAPA)

¹ The Swiss coat of arms, those of the can­tons, the com­munes and oth­er pub­lic au­thor­it­ies re­cog­nised un­der can­ton­al law, the char­ac­ter­ist­ic ele­ments of can­ton­al coats of arms in con­nec­tion with a coat of arms shield and signs that could be con­fused with them may only be used by the pub­lic body to which they be­long.

² Para­graph 1 also ap­plies to word signs that refer to the Swiss coat of arms or the coat of arms of a can­ton, a com­mune or oth­er pub­lic au­thor­ity re­cog­nised un­der can­ton­al law.

³ The signs re­ferred to in para­graphs 1 and 2 may not be li­censed or as­signed.

⁴ The use of coats of arms un­der para­graph 1 by per­sons oth­er than the pub­lic body en­titled to use them is per­miss­ible in the fol­low­ing cases:

a.

as il­lus­tra­tions in dic­tion­ar­ies, ref­er­ence works, sci­entif­ic works or sim­il­ar works;

b.

for the dec­or­a­tion of fest­ivals and events;

c.

for the dec­or­a­tion of ob­jects of artist­ic crafts­man­ship such as cups, her­ald­ic stained glass and com­mem­or­ative coins for fest­ivals and events;

d.

as an ele­ment of the Swiss pat­ent mark un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Pat­ents Act of 25 June 1954⁶;

e.

in col­lect­ive or guar­an­tee marks that have been filed by a pub­lic body and may be used by private per­sons in ac­cord­ance with the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the use of the mark;

f.

where there ex­ists a right to con­tin­ued use un­der Art­icle 35.

⁵ The can­tons, com­munes and oth­er pub­lic au­thor­it­ies re­cog­nised un­der can­ton­al law may al­low the use of their re­spect­ive coats of arms by oth­er per­sons in oth­er cases.