The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) has confirmed that the partially revised Patents Act enters into force on 1 January 2027. From that date the IPI will carry out a fee-based prior-art search for every national patent application and issue a search report; applicants may also request a full substantive examination covering novelty and inventive step. The search fee is 500 Swiss francs and the full examination costs a further 300 Swiss francs; the number of claims covered by the filing fee rises from 10 to 15, and technical documents may be filed and published in English without translation into an official language.
For applications already pending before the IPI, the Institute explains that applicants may request in writing, no later than 30 September 2026, that the invoice for the examination fee be issued early; if the fee is then paid on time, the application will be examined to completion under the current law. Applicants may instead request accelerated substantive examination once formal examination is complete, and here too the decisive point is that the examination fee is paid before 1 January 2027. Pending applications for which no examination fee has been paid by that date move automatically to the new law and receive a retrospective, fee-based search. J&C recommends that companies with pending Swiss applications check the examination-fee status of each file now and, where they prefer the old regime and wish to avoid the additional search fee and the new examination rules, request early invoicing before 30 September and pay promptly.
