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Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (CH/IPI) — national
Layer national
Jurisdiction CH (WIPO ST.3: CH)
Issuing body Eidgenössisches Institut für Geistiges Eigentum / Institut Fédéral de la Propriété Intellectuelle (IPI / IGE)
Rights administered patent, trademark, design, SPC (supplementary protection certificate, including paediatric extension)
Working languages German, French, Italian, English (API docs English-only)
Connector status planned (BYOK) — IPI datadelivery API permits per-user self-hosted access via signed Terms of Use
Last verified 2026-05-18
Manifest entry not yet listed (planned)

Detail surveys:

Higher layers covering this office transitively:

  • EPO INPADOC (via regional/epo.md) — CH-validated EP patents at the biblio/family layer; CH is an EPC contracting state and London Agreement country (EP grants automatically effective in CH+LI as a unified patent territory).
  • WIPO Designview — CH national designs since 2017-11-20 (the only programmatic path for CH designs; there is no DesignSearch action on IPI's own API).
  • WIPO Madrid — Madrid IRs designating CH (also surfaced through IPI's TrademarkSearch action).

Rating: 🟡 Yellow — BYOK

IPI datadelivery API at swissreg.ch/public/api/v1 is XML over HTTPS POST + OIDC ROPC auth (Keycloak at idp.ipi.ch). Free; 2 GiB/24h rolling quota. Covers TMs, patents, patent pubs, SPCs, SPC pubs — NOT designs. ToU §2 forbids credential sharing → BYOK only. Jump to access details → View on the atlas →

§1 Mission

IPI is Switzerland's federal IP office. As a non-EU EPC contracting state with the unique CH+LI unified patent territory (1978 CH-LI Patent Treaty), CH register data is the only authoritative source for Swiss-national patents, SPCs (including paediatric extensions live since 2019-01-01), national-only Swiss trademarks, and Swiss designs. Agents working on European IP that touches Switzerland — pharmaceutical SPC strategy, Swiss-only TM portfolios, EP validation status in CH — need IPI as a primary register, not EPO INPADOC.

§2 What's unique here

  • CH SPCs + paediatric SPCs — EPO does not register national SPCs; IPI is the only path. Paediatric extension regime live since 2019-01-01.
  • CH+LI unified patent territory — under the 1978 Treaty, the IPI register is canonical for both Switzerland and Liechtenstein on the patent side.
  • National-only Swiss trademarks — those not filed via Madrid IR.
  • Swiss-language full text — DE/FR/IT class headings and substantive text not surfaced in INPADOC.
  • CH designs — available via WIPO Designview only on the programmatic side (no IPI DesignSearch action exists).

§3 Programmatic surfaces

IPI datadelivery API (the real live surface)

Field Value
Endpoint https://www.swissreg.ch/public/api/v1 (POST, XML body)
Auth OpenID Connect / OAuth 2.0 ROPC grant at idp.ipi.ch/auth/realms/egov (Keycloak); username + password from a signed ToU account
Format XML on WIPO ST.96 + Swiss-Interoperable-Superset extensions; ZIP-bundle option with /response.xml plus images/documents
Cost Free of charge — "electronic delivery of IP data is available free of charge to anyone interested"
Rate limit 2 GiB / 24-hour rolling window per user; 12 concurrent requests; penalty model accumulates on 4xx/5xx (2048 cap → 15-min cooldown)
ToS posture Wet-signed ToU posted to Bern; §2 forbids passing access details to third parties; §3 anti-redistribution clause runs with the data
Rating (BYOK) 🟢 Green for self-hosted per-user access — same shape as JPO / KIPO / INPI France
Rating (zero-infra proxy) 🔴 Red — §2 forbids credential sharing
Primary source IPI — Data delivery via API · API docs (last updated 2026-03-02) · Terms of Use PDF

Six action types: TrademarkSearch, PatentSearch, PatentPublicationSearch, SPCSearch, SPCPublicationSearch, plus the diagnostic UserQuota and Echo. No DesignSearch action — designs are explicitly out of scope on the API (IPI's own landing page confirms "Currently, trademark and patent data records can be obtained via API"). Query language is structured XML (ApiRequest documents with Query / Require / per-right namespace fields), not URL parameters. Pagination is cursor-style via <Continuation> elements. Session token capped at 600 minutes.

Raw patent CSV bulk

Field Value
Endpoint Patent data page
Auth none
Format CSV, filing dates from 1978-01-01, refreshed every six months
Rating 🔴 Red — bulk-only; violates zero-infra constraint

Companion to the API, not a replacement. Useful as a backfile snapshot but not for live register lookups.

Swissreg web client (database.ipi.ch / swissreg.ch UI)

Field Value
Endpoint database-client/
Auth none (public UI)
Format HTML
Rating 🔴 Red — UI scrape; supported path is the datadelivery API

The classic Swissreg HTML UI is being retired in favor of database.ipi.ch; the API host at swissreg.ch/public/api/v1 is the long-term plan, not the HTML side.

opendata.swiss federal portal

Field Value
Endpoint opendata.swiss CKAN API
Result count: 0 as of 2026-05-18
Rating 🔴 N/A — IPI does not publish to the federal open-data portal

Notable structural choice — most other Swiss federal bodies (BFS, Swisstopo) do publish through opendata.swiss; IPI's only programmatic channels are the datadelivery API and the patent CSV bulk.

§4 Fees

Policy: link only. Reproducing fee amounts is not our job.

IPI publishes a fee schedule (in CHF) covering filing, examination, grant, opposition, renewal, and recordation fees for patents, SPCs, trademarks, and designs. The datadelivery API itself is free of charge.

§5 Access via patent-client-agents

What we cover today

  • CH-validated EP patents at biblio/family fidelity via patent_client_agents.epo_ops (transitive).
  • CH designs via WIPO Designview (no direct IPI surface).

What we should add (planned — BYOK)

  • patent_client_agents.ipi_swissreg — datadelivery API connector following the JPO / INPI France BYOK pattern. Env-gates MCP tools on IPI_DATA_USERNAME + IPI_DATA_PASSWORD; not exposed by the hosted demo. Covers TrademarkSearch, PatentSearch, PatentPublicationSearch, SPCSearch, SPCPublicationSearch. Closes the SPC + CH-national TM + CH-language full-text gaps. Estimated 4-6 days build given the XML query language + cursor pagination + penalty-model error handling (which is unusual — accumulates 4xx/5xx penalties that slow concurrency before hard cooldown; clients with sloppy error handling can dig themselves into a hole).

What we should NOT add (and why)

  • IPI on the hosted demo at mcp.patentclient.com — §2 of the ToU forbids passing access details to third parties; BYOK on self-hosted only.
  • CSV bulk ingestion — six-monthly snapshot violates the zero-infra constraint; the API is the supported live path.
  • HTML scrape of the Swissreg / database.ipi.ch UI — the classic UI is being retired; the API is the long-term plan.
  • DesignSearch action — does not exist on IPI's API; CH designs route via WIPO Designview.

Next steps

  1. Sign and post the IPI Terms of Use to Stauffacherstrasse 65/59g, 3003 Bern — wet signature, no self-service portal. Foreign signup is permitted (no Swiss-residency requirement on the ToU's face), but the postal step adds real latency.
  2. Write specs/ch-ipi-connector-spec.md. Pattern: JPO env-gating + OIDC ROPC token refresh + XML ApiRequest document builder + <Continuation> cursor pagination + penalty-aware retry/backoff.
  3. Decide whether to record live cassettes (requires the credentials) or ship with synthesized fixtures (KIPO / INPI France precedent — live cassettes pending downstream-user credentials).

§6 Known unknowns

  • Postal latency to credentials. No primary source publishes a typical turnaround time from sending the signed ToU to receiving credentials. German Bundesbehörde analogues run 2-6 weeks.
  • Penalty model in practice. The docs describe 4xx/5xx penalties as scaling concurrency down before lockout, but the exact thresholds for permit-release delay (up to 15s) and concurrency narrowing are undocumented.
  • CH+LI on the TM and design side. The patent side is clearly unified by the 1978 Treaty; for TMs and designs LI runs through a separate Liechtenstein Office of Economic Affairs. Worth a separate LI/LO survey if Liechtenstein-only filings ever surface as a need.

§7 References

Primary sources only.

Service overviews:

Technical specs:

Legal terms:

Substantive law:

Detail survey + wave:

Last updated 2026-05-18.