Portfolio Analysis in Zurich.

A patent portfolio analysis Zurich innovators can put in front of a board or an investor has to answer a very Swiss question first: how strong is a patent that the office never examined for novelty? Switzerland grants national patents without testing novelty or inventive step, so validity is only ever proven by analysis, by opposition or in the Federal Patent Court — and that changes how every portfolio here should be read. Zurich sits at the centre of the country with the world’s highest patent output per capita, home to ETH Zurich’s deep-tech spinoffs and the European research labs of Google, IBM and Disney. PerspireIP builds the landscape, gap, strength and valuation studies that the R&D leaders and IP counsel running those Zurich estates can actually act on.

The work is diligence and strategy — not litigation. It is the study that supports a spinoff’s Series B raise, the schedule that keeps a large estate from overspending on renewals, and the readiness review that gets a portfolio prepared for Switzerland’s 2027 examination reform before it lands.

Why patent portfolio analysis Zurich owners start with un-examined grants

In most jurisdictions a granted patent carries the office’s implicit endorsement that the invention is new and inventive. In Switzerland it does not. The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI/IGE) in Bern examines national applications only for formal requirements and excluded subject matter — it does not assess novelty or inventive step. A Swiss patent can therefore issue over prior art that would have sunk it at the EPO or USPTO, and no one discovers this until the patent is asserted or challenged.

That fact reshapes portfolio work here. A grant certificate is not evidence of strength; it is a starting point. The real strength of a Swiss estate is established by analysis — by testing each significant claim against the state of the art the office never searched. For a buyer, a lender or an investor, that gap is precisely the risk they are paying you to close before the deal closes.

• Validity is untested at grant — national Swiss patents are not examined for novelty or inventive step, so strength must be proven, not assumed
• Prior-art scoring is the core deliverable — we grade each key asset against the art the IPI did not search
• Deal readiness — a buyer’s counsel will run this analysis in diligence; better to know your own weak claims first
• Assertion risk — a weak Swiss patent invites a validity counterattack the moment you enforce it

The 2027 Patents Act reform every Zurich estate must prepare for

The most important change in a generation to Swiss filing strategy arrives on 1 January 2027, when the revised Patents Act enters into force. The Federal Council confirmed the date after approving the modernised legislation, and it reshapes exactly the un-examined-grant problem above. From that date the IPI will conduct a search on the state of the art for every national application and publish a prior-art report, ending the era of the fully unsearched Swiss patent.

Applicants then choose their level of scrutiny. They can keep a partially examined patent as today — the fee falls to CHF 400 from CHF 500 — or request a full substantive examination for novelty and inventive step in line with international standards, for an additional CHF 300. Full examination produces a stronger, harder-to-invalidate right; partial examination stays fast and cheap but leaves validity open.

For a Zurich portfolio owner this is a strategic fork, and it should be planned now rather than in a rush next January. We assess which pending and future Swiss filings justify full examination, which are better left partial, and how the new published prior-art reports will affect the perceived strength and value of the estate you already hold. Getting ahead of the reform is one of the highest-return moves a Swiss portfolio review delivers this year.

Reading Zurich’s ETH spinoff and deep-tech portfolios

Zurich’s patent base is deep-tech and research-driven, and its engine is ETH Zurich. The university had spun off more than 600 companies by the end of 2024 and set a record with dozens more in 2025, with artificial intelligence and machine-learning ventures the largest single share of new formations. The University of Zurich adds a second research pipeline, and together they feed a founder base whose entire investment case often rests on a young, thin, fast-moving patent estate.

Around those spinoffs sit the European research operations of the global technology majors: Google runs one of its largest engineering hubs outside the United States in Zurich, IBM Research has operated in Rüschlikon since 1956 and jointly runs the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center with ETH, and Disney Research, Microsoft and Meta all maintain a presence. Robotics, AI, semiconductors and fintech dominate the resulting filings.

• ETH and university spinoffs — young deep-tech estates where a Series A/B raise turns on how real the IP is
• AI and robotics — software-heavy claims that reward a careful landscape and eligibility read
• Semiconductors and nanotech — the IBM–ETH research corridor and its dense patent thickets
• Fintech and crypto — method-heavy portfolios whose strength is collective rather than single-patent

Note the geography: Switzerland’s big pharma — Roche and Novartis — is anchored in Basel, not Zurich. A Zurich portfolio is overwhelmingly a hardware, software and deep-tech story, and we read it as one rather than importing a life-sciences template.

Enforcement without the UPC: the Federal Patent Court in St. Gallen

Portfolio risk is partly forum risk, and Switzerland’s forum is distinctive. Switzerland is a member of the European Patent Convention but not of the European Union, so it cannot join the Unified Patent Court. A European patent validated in Switzerland — and the unitary patent never covers Switzerland — is enforced nationally, entirely outside the UPC and its central-division risk. For a Zurich owner that means one Swiss court, not a pan-European proceeding.

That court is the Swiss Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht / Tribunal fédéral des brevets), seated in St. Gallen and operating since 1 January 2012. It has exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over both the validity and the infringement of patents nationwide, and its panels combine legally trained and technically trained judges, giving Swiss patent litigation an unusual level of technical rigour. Appeals go to the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne, which reviews points of law only.

Because there is a single specialist court and no UPC route, a Swiss portfolio can be graded against one coherent body of practice — but validity is also decided in that single forum, which raises the stakes of the un-examined grant. We map which assets are most exposed to a validity counterclaim at St. Gallen, and which would hold, so the estate can be strengthened or pruned before a dispute rather than during one.

Landscape, gap and white-space analysis for Zurich technology

The offensive side of portfolio work is finding what you do not yet own. A landscape maps the patents held by you and your competitors across a technology area; a gap or white-space analysis then shows where protectable, commercially useful inventions sit unclaimed — the space your R&D leaders should be filing into before a rival does. For a fast-moving Zurich deep-tech company, that map is a filing roadmap, not an academic exercise.

Switzerland’s outsized innovation density makes the competitive field crowded. The country leads the world on patent applications per capita — well over a thousand European filings per million inhabitants, far ahead of the next-ranked nations — so a Zurich estate rarely operates in open ground. Knowing exactly who holds what, by assignee, claim scope and filing trend, is the difference between a defensible position and an expensive collision.

• Competitive landscape maps — who holds what across your technology space, by assignee, claim scope and filing trend
• Gap and white-space analysis — unclaimed, protectable ground to direct the next filing program
• Strength and coverage scoring — how well the portfolio actually covers the products and the roadmap
• SEP and FRAND mapping — declared-essential exposure and opportunity for portfolios that touch a wireless, video or connectivity standard

Zurich’s software and AI weighting adds a layer most landscapes miss. Under EPO practice, computer-implemented inventions are patentable only where they deliver a further technical effect, and the same technical-character line governs how Swiss courts read a claim. So for an ETH spinoff or a fintech estate we do not just count patents — we flag which software and AI claims sit on solid technical ground and which are exposed, because that distinction is what moves a valuation and what a technical investor’s counsel will probe first. Read this way, a landscape becomes a decision tool for the next filing and the next funding round, not a static picture.

Pruning renewal spend and reading EP-in-Switzerland validations

The fastest return a portfolio review delivers is usually a cut, not a filing. Swiss patents — national grants and European patents validated in Switzerland alike — carry annual renewal fees payable to the IPI, and they escalate year on year. Across a portfolio of dozens or hundreds of rights, much of that spend keeps alive patents that no longer cover a shipping product or block a competitor.

A pruning analysis scores every asset before its next renewal against three tests: does it still cover a product or a roadmap item, does it block a competitor, and would a buyer pay for it. Assets that fail all three are candidates to drop at the next window. For a Swiss estate the exercise is sharpened by the un-examined-grant problem — there is little sense paying escalating renewals on a patent whose claims would not survive scrutiny.

Validated European patents deserve their own read. Because Switzerland stands outside the UPC, each EP right in your estate is a standalone Swiss asset with its own renewal timeline and its own enforcement path through St. Gallen. We inventory those validations, confirm legal status and ownership, and fold them into the same coverage, strength and cost picture as the national grants, so nothing is renewed on autopilot.

How PerspireIP builds a portfolio analysis you can act on

Every engagement follows the same disciplined path, scaled to whether you are prepping a raise, defending a budget or planning for the 2027 reform. We inventory the portfolio, verify legal status and ownership, map each asset to products and competitors, grade strength and validity exposure against the prior art the IPI never searched, and price the estate for the transaction or decision that prompted the review.

• Full inventory with legal-status, term and renewal-fee timeline for every national grant and EP-in-Switzerland validation
• Product-to-patent coverage mapping and a claim-strength score across the estate
• Validity-risk grading of the significant assets against the un-searched prior art
• Landscape, gap and white-space maps, with SEP and FRAND exposure where relevant
• A 2027-readiness view — which filings justify full substantive examination and which stay partial
• Renewal-fee pruning recommendations and a valuation view for a raise, M&A or licensing, delivered as data-room-ready exhibits

We work alongside your in-house IP team, your founders or your outside counsel as a specialist analysis partner, deliver to your deal or budget calendar, and keep every engagement confidential. Whether you need a one-time diligence study before a Zurich financing, an annual portfolio health check for the board, or an ongoing pruning and landscaping program, we scale to fit. Send us the assignee name or a patent list and we will scope a patent portfolio analysis Zurich project within one business day.

IP Landscape & Resources in Zurich

Key intellectual-property authorities and venues relevant to Zurich:

• Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI/IGE) — grants Swiss national patents without examining novelty or inventive step, and from 1 January 2027 will search the state of the art for every application and offer optional full substantive examination
• Swiss Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht) — the specialist court in St. Gallen with exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over the validity and infringement of patents in Switzerland, outside the Unified Patent Court
• European Patent Office (EPO) — grants European patents that must be validated and enforced nationally in Switzerland, and publishes the family and legal-status data used to grade an estate
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) — PATENTSCOPE — global patent-family and publication data used for landscape, gap and white-space analysis across jurisdictions

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