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At-a-glance: Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property Stauffacherstrasse 65/59g, CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland Tel: +41 (0)31 377 77 77, Fax: +41 (0)31 377 77 78 Email: info@ipi.ch Website: www.ige.ch Filing in Switzerland was in relative... [more]

Filing in Switzerland was in relative stasis this year, report practitioners, though the drop was not so precipitous as to provoke panic just yet. One thing that was flourishing however was court work: "We do a lot of litigation work, and the market has seen more of this. Companies perceive IP as strategically important and defend it forcefully. This is a trend."

This might have something to do with the new central Swiss Patent Court, which began receiving cases in St Gallen in January 2012. This might not have been before time, either, as one partner says: "I'm very happy with it. Before that, litigation in Switzerland was a nightmare."

"The new court is an excellent thing. Before, we had a number of cantonal courts, with their own civil procedure and they would get one patent case every five years. It was not competent and not to the advantage of users," explains another lawyer.

Another adumbrates one of the effects on client behaviour, and comments: "International patent owners might not have been inclined to litigate here before due to the time it took. But it is up, running and we are getting good decisions." Other practitioners indicate that, if the court can provide consistent quality, it might come into the thinking of forum shoppers in the coming years.

Elsewhere, the proposed so-called Swissness legislation is inching through the governmental process, while lawyers point out an incipient trend of increased pharmaceutical cases, something expected to grow during 2013.