[1] In October 2007, a revision was approved in order to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty in the act, a process started in 2004 with the release by the Swiss Federal Council of a draft project.
All "works" in the sense of the law, i.e. "creations of the mind, literary or artistic, that have an individual character"[3] are automatically protected by copyright, irrespective of whether copyright is asserted or not, but provided that it passes the threshold of originality necessary to constitute a protected work.
Although first theoretic publications about copyright in Switzerland date back to 1738,[5] the topic remained unregulated by law until the 19th century.
The first copyright legislation in Switzerland was introduced during the times of the French occupation in the Napoleonic era.
The first copyright law developed locally in Switzerland was that of the canton of Ticino, which became effective on 20 March 1835.
[9] The first federal copyright law in Switzerland was passed by the Swiss parliament on April 23, 1883 and entered in force on 1 January 1884.
[11] Two years later, Switzerland was a founding member of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which became effective on December 5, 1887.
[18] In 2019, another revision to Swiss copyright law was approved by the Federal Assembly, which came into force on 1 April 2020.
They also introduce a notice and stay down procedure for services which host copyright infringing works, establish that IP addresses can now be collected and submitted to authorities as part of copyright infringement investigations, and introduce a new renumeration scheme for works offered via video on demand platforms.
[27] As a result of the non-retroactive revision of 1992, when the 50-year copyright term was extended to 70 years, works that were already in the public domain in 1993, when the new law started being applied, do not benefit from renewed protection; therefore, all works made by authors deceased in 1942 or before are in the public domain in Switzerland.
However: Only "works" in the sense of the law, i.e. "creations of the mind, literary or artistic, that have an individual character",[3] are protected by copyright.
Legal scholarship has attempted to summarise the Federal Supreme Court's jurisprudence on the threshold of originality as follows:[32] As of the Copyright Act adopted on 1 April 2020, works that are "photographic depictions and depictions of three-dimensional objects produced by a process similar to that of photography" are now eligible for copyright, even if they do not display an individual character.
[20][21] However, such works receive a shorter copyright term lasting only for 50 years after production of the photograph (Art.