Swiss Council Backs Stronger IP Protection Against "AI Misuse"

The Swiss National Council (NC) rejected the parameters originally proposed by the Motion 24.4596 "Besserer Schutz des geistigen Eigentums vor KI-Missbrauch" / "Better Protection of Intellectual Property Against AI Misuse", put forward by Council of States (CS) member Petra Gössi of the liberal party, while affirming the overall need to strengthen the protection of copyrighted content against AI-related misuse. The NC adopted, however, the motion in an amended form on 16 September 2025.

Gössi submitted the motion in December 2024. It requires the Federal Council (FC) to ensure that copyrighted works (such as newspaper articles or picture) are protected when used by AI system providers. It proposes that rights holders must giveexplicit consent (in the sense of an opt-in) before their copyrighted works can be used to train generative AI systems, and that providers of publicly available AI systems should not be allowed to rely on existing exceptions in the Copyright