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Switzerland

Intellectual Property

The Federal Supreme Court has held that the figurative international trademark MADONNA, which is based on a German home registration, could not be added to the Swiss Trademark Register. On the three occassions that the courts have ruled on the matter, they have held that the term 'Madonna' constitutes a reference to the Virgin Mary, and that, as such, its commercial use as a trademark would be immoral.

Media & Entertainment

The Supreme Court recently dealt with the civil liability for blog posts on a newspaper's website whose content infringed the personality rights of a third party. The infringed party initiated proceedings against the blog author and the newspaper. The newspaper appealed, arguing that it should not be held liable for the infringing acts of the blog's author. The court rejected the argument.

Any person whose personality rights have been directly affected by a statement of fact made by the media is entitled to a right of reply. In practice, requests to publish a reply are often not expressly rejected, but the replies are published as letters to the editor or as corrections instead of formal replies. The Supreme Court recently rejected the view that the right of reply is lost whenever the content of the reply is published in a different form.

The Federal Supreme Court recently awarded Schweizer Fernsehen the right to rely on the protection of confidential sources afforded by Article 17(3) of the Constitution and Article 28a(1) of the Criminal Code in refusing to give evidence which could identify the author of a comment on a blog that it maintained.