Anyone who offers goods or services on the internet or other electronic business channels is required to “provide clear and complete information regarding their identity and contact address including their e-mail address”. This is the provision that governs the legal notice requirement for websites and which has been defined in the Swiss Federal Act on Unfair Competition (UCA) for over a decade (Art. 3(1) s(1) UCA). It provides transparency concerning who is behind a website and gives users easy access to the operator’s contact information.
The legal notice (sometimes referred to as “imprint”, the literal translation of the German “Impressum”) can also give an indication of the trustworthiness of a website. If products are offered at a fraction of the price found on other websites, for example, but there is no legal notice at all or it contains suspicious addresses or contact details (e.g. only coordinates or a type of legal entity that does not exist in Switzerland), the likelihood that the offerings are untrustworthy or even fraudulent is increased.
A legal notice is not required for every website but is usually mandatory when the website is used to offer products and services. It makes no difference if some or all the products and services are free of charge. The legal notice requirement applies not only to conventional online shops, but also to file-sharing and social media platforms and to services of cloud providers and web hosting providers. However, the legal notice requirement does not apply to purely private or other non-commercial activities such as operating blogs or social media and information platforms without commercial offerings.
What must be included in the legal notice?
Swiss law requires that clear and complete information about the website operator’s identity and contact address, including the e-mail address, are included in the legal notice.
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Identity
For natural persons (i.e. people), for example, the business owner of a sole proprietorship, the full first and last names must be provided. A pseudonym alone is not sufficient, but it can be listed as an additional name.
For legal entities (e.g. corporations, limited liability companies and associations), the company or name must be given as specified in the statutes and, if registered, as listed in the commercial register. The legal form of the company must be stated – either in full or as an abbreviation. The “obligation to use the business name and other names” (Art. 954a of the Swiss Code of Obligations) is also relevant here, which requires use of the full and unamended business name or registered name listed in the commercial register for formal business transactions (including such transactions on the internet). -
Contact address including e-mail address
The postal address to which letters and parcels can be delivered must also be stated. In the case of natural persons, this is usually the address of their place of residence; in the case of legal entities, it is the address of their registered office.
These two elements are required to be in the legal notice under Swiss law – nothing more.
The information in the legal notice on the website of a limited liability company, for example, might look like this:
Sample GmbH (LLC)
Sample Street 1
8009 Sampletown
E-Mail: info@samplegmbh.ch
It is, of course, possible to add further details: the telephone number, Unique Business Identification Number (UID), first and last name of a person authorized to represent the company, a link to the Central Business Name Index (zefix.ch) or an extract from the cantonal commercial register are examples of additional information that may be useful to users. However, providing this information is voluntary under Swiss law.
It is not advisable, by contrast, to refer to disclaimers or copyrights in the legal notice. Such references are found time and again in the legal notices of websites and often contain virtually identical text elements, which indicates that they have been copied from other websites as supposedly good templates or created by dubious text generators. In many cases, website operators are not even aware of the legal background of such statements, particularly in view of the fact that they usually have no legal effect. Using such language on the assumption that even if it doesn’t help, it won’t do any harm is misguided in this context since careless formulations could well turn out to be disadvantageous later in the event of a legal dispute. So, when in doubt: steer clear of fancy legal phrases in the legal notice. Instead, focus on the few elements that absolutely must be there.
The required information must not be omitted, however, as the intentional violation of the provision of the Swiss Federal Act on Unfair Competition mentioned above may result in fines. Although a severe penalty is not to be expected within the scope of possible outcomes, the lack of a legal notice can also be harmful to the company and its business in other ways because the website appears unprofessional and may even be perceived as untrustworthy. Moreover, a violation of the obligation to use the business name and other names (see above) can lead to consequences under civil and competition law.
«Operators of Swiss websites must disclose both their identity and their contact addresses on the website – in the legal notice, if such is required, as well as in their privacy notice.»
If there is a connection to a foreign country, further disclosures may be required in the legal notice as per the laws of that country. In case of doubt, website operators should check whether foreign regulations regarding the legal notice requirement are applicable and differ from those of Swiss law (e.g. by also requiring details concerning register entries or any supervisory authority that may have jurisdiction). Further clarifications are appropriate, for example, if the offerings on the website are also aimed at persons abroad; one indication of this, for example, is listing prices in a foreign currency as well.
How should the legal notice be presented?
The “legal notice” does not necessarily have to be designated as such and the law is not specific in terms of form and language either. However, in the author’s opinion, the focus should be on bearing in mind the purposes described above in combination with the principle of not making things more complicated than they need to be.
This means that an easily visible link with the text “Legal notice” should be included at the bottom of the website, also known as the footer of the website. The link should lead to the required information mentioned above and any voluntarily provided information. In terms of language, the legal notice should be available in the languages in which the website is presented or in which the products and services are offered.
Privacy notice as the legal notice requirement 2.0?
Regardless of whether a website requires a legal notice or not, a privacy notice is usually necessary in any case. The reason for this is the general data protection information obligation for data controllers, i.e., the entities that determine the purpose and means of processing personal data. Website operators will typically be considered data controllers. This obligation was introduced with the revised Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), which came into force in September 2023.
The data controller must, in accordance with the revised FADP, inform data subjects of the collection of their data (data subjects are, for example, users whose personal data, such as e-mail addresses or first and last names, are collected via the online shop). The general privacy notice has become standard practice to comply with this information requirement. In their privacy notices, companies provide information about how they process personal data – as operators of websites and apps, but also in the course of other processing activities (online and offline), for example, in customer relationship management, in communication with suppliers and partner companies, and in connection with recruitment processes.
Find out more:
In another post on the Hostpoint blog, the law firm VISCHER put together some important and helpful tips for drafting privacy notices. Further blog posts explain what needs to be considered with the revised Swiss Data Protection Act coming into effect in 2023 and the handling of cookie banners.
The minimum information to be provided in the privacy notice include information about the identity and contact details of the data controller. While the FADP, in contrast to the UCA, does not explicitly require an e-mail address, a privacy notice must also include electronic or telephone contact details.
The privacy notice must be made available in a precise, transparent, comprehensible and easily accessible form on the website (see Art. 13 of the Data Protection Ordinance). The information above regarding the legal notice on the website can also be used for the privacy notice: ideally, a link in the website footer leads to a separate page with the privacy notice. And don’t forget: the privacy notice should also be available in the languages in which the website is presented or in which the products and services are offered.
Conclusion
Information about the identity and contact addresses must be included on the website. Operators of Swiss websites must disclose both their identity and their contact addresses on the website – in the legal notice, if such is required, and in their privacy notice.
About the author:
This post was written by legal expert Jonas Baeriswyl (attorney) at the VISCHER law firm, and was contributed as a guest post to the Hostpoint blog.
