Swatch has been locked in a legal battle with Britain's Cousins UK which sells watch spare parts to independent repairers and said it stopped receiving supplies from Swatch and its ETA movement unit in late 2015.

Cousins UK had threatened to sue Swatch at the High Court in London to force the resumption of supplies, but Swatch prevented this by starting a procedure to have the case heard by a commercial court in the Swiss capital, Bern.

The Bern court had declined to take up the case, saying Swatch had not shown sufficient cause for a local trial, but Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court ruled in a verdict announced on Tuesday that Swatch had a sufficient interest in having the case heard in Switzerland.

The case will now revert to the court in Bern.

(Reporting by Michael Shields and Silke Koltrowitz; editing by Jason Neely)