Legal action can be taken by the owner of the rights in question irrespective of whether they are a natural or a legal person. This could be the author or third-party assignees of the copyright.
This category also includes collective rights management organisations which have been granted certain rights. In any case, another owner of the copyright than the author cannot exercise more rights that it has been granted by the author. For example, if the author grants an editor the copyright in a document on a non-exclusive basis for the sole purpose of publishing the work as an article in a printed magazine, that editor cannot take legal action for a copyright infringement if the author then decides to grant the rights to publish the same article to an online magazine.
Action is brought against anyone who participated in the infringement, i.e. the main person(s) responsible for the illegal act and any instigators and accomplices.
For example, the instigator is the person who asks for the creation of the work or places it on the market, both of which infringe the copyright. The accomplice could be a web host that publishes the work which infringes the copyright.
These actors are usually jointly liable.
Unlike actions for reparations in Swiss common law, it is not necessary to establish the culpability of the defendant for these defensive actions. It is possible to request the removal from a website of content which infringes a copyright, even if the defendant was not aware of the infringement.
The request to the court must be as precise as possible and refer to the case at hand (BGE 97 II 92).
For example, it is possible to request the court to prohibit or remedy an illegal act. However, it is also possible to request the court to force the defendant to act in a positive way, e.g. to respect the authorship of a work.
In order to ensure that the court order is properly implemented as soon as possible, the best course of action is to request for a threat of enforcement to be issued along with the verdict based on Art. 292 Swiss Criminal Code (SCC), which stipulates that a criminal penalty may be enforced if an official order is disobeyed.
If the copyright belongs to more than one person, each joint author may take legal action independently for infringements of this copyright but may only ask for relief if it benefits all the other joint authors (Art. 7 Para. 3 CopA).
Any natural or legal owner of the copyrights in question. Therefore, this may be the author but also any third-party assignees of the copyright, in particular collective rights assignment organisations which have been granted certain rights.
The copyright owner cannot exercise any rights other than those granted by the author. For example, if the author grants an editor the copyright to a document on a non-exclusive basis for the sole purpose of publishing the work as an article in a printed magazine, that editor cannot take legal action for a copyright infringement if the author then decides to grant the rights to publish the same article to an online magazine.
If the copyright belongs to more than one person, each joint author may take legal action independently for infringements but may only ask for relief if it benefits all the other joint authors (Art. 7 Para. 3 CopA).
The action is brought against anyone who participated in the infringement, i.e. the main person(s) responsible for the illegal act and any instigators and accomplices.
The instigator is the person who asks for the creation of the work or places the work on the market, which infringes the copyright. For example, this might be a professor who asks the university webmaster to publish an entire, scanned book on a website to share it with all the visitors to the site.
The accomplice is the person who performs and responds to the instigator’s request. The accomplice here, for example, would be the university webmaster who publishes an entire book scanned by the professor on the university website at the latter’s request.
The request to the court must be as precise as possible with regard to the situation described and the conclusions drawn (cf. BGE 97 II 92). For example, it can request the court to prohibit or remedy an illegal act or force the defendant to respect the authorship of a work.
In order to ensure that the court order is properly implemented as soon as possible, the best course of action is to request that a threat of enforcement is issued with the verdict based on Art. 292 SCC, which stipulates that a criminal penalty may be enforced if an official order is disobeyed. If the court finds that the manufacture of the goods infringed the copyright, it can order their forfeiture and sale or destruction.
In addition to actions for prohibition (Art. 62 Para. 1 (a) CopA), remedying an existing infringement (Art. 62 Para. 1 (b) CopA) and for providing information (Art. 62 Para. 1 (c) CopA), which aim to limit/remedy the infringement, the following actions also aim to compensate the injured party for the damages suffered: action for damages (Art. 41 SCO), satisfaction (Art. 49 SCO) and handing over of profits (Art. 62 Para. 2 CopA).
The person asking the court to remedy the infringement of their copyright (Art. 62 Para. 1 (b) CopA) can request that compensation be awarded for all the damages they have suffered as a result of the violation (Art. 41 et. seq. SCO).