The Federal Administrative Court reversed, holding that Calvi was not primarily recognized as the name of a place, and that no metal goods industry was present in Calvi, and likely to be present in the future.

The IPO appealed the decision (yes, in Switzerland, the IPO can appeal decisions it does not like). The Federal Supreme Court sided with the IPO: Calvi was primarily the name of a place. Interestingly, the Supreme Court seems to base this assumption mostly on a search on Google, where the first hit for "Calvi" is for the Corsican town. It is irrelevant that "Calvi" is also a fairly common Italian surname, as long as the primary meaning is geographic.

The Supreme Court then applied its "Yukon" factors. Basically, if the place indicated by a geographic indication is not suitable for production of the claimed goods, and likely to remain unsuitable in the future, then the term is neither misleading nor is there a public interest to keep it available to all competitors: it is not misleading because the consumers know that the goods in question cannot come from this place, and there is no need to keep the term available for competitors, because there can be no competitors based there. Classic examples are "Sahara" or "Yukon" for industrial goods.

However, Calvi is not like the Yukon: while industrial activity is low and the primary source of income is tourism, Calvi is not unsuitable per se for the industrial production of goods. It cannot be excluded that in the future, other entities than the applicant want to produce metallic goods in Calvi, and they should be able to freely use the term "Calvi" for their goods. Hence, the extension of protection for "Calvi" to Switzerland was refused, as the term is both misleading for goods not originating from Calvi, Corsica, and belongs to the public domain.

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