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The woman, Renate Langer, made the allegations
to Swiss authorities only in September.
When they emerged, a lawyer for the 84-year-old French-Polish
film director called them an absurd attempt to generate media
attention.
Prosecutors in the central canton of Bern said late on Wednesday
the time limit for filing charges had expired.
Langer was the fourth woman to accuse Polanski publicly of
sexually assaulting them when they were teenagers.
Swiss authorities arrested Polanski in 2009 on his arrival in
Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award at a film
festival. He was released two months later on bail under "house
arrest" in his Gstaad chalet.
This was for fleeing U.S. sentencing in 1978 for unlawful sex
with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in Los Angeles, in 1977 in a
case in which he pleaded guilty at the time.
In August, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon
rejected a request by Geimer to have the criminal case against
Polanski dismissed, ruling that the director remained a fugitive
from justice.
In a statement to Reuters last month, Polanski's lawyer
reiterated that Polanski had acknowledged having had a sexual
relationship with Geimer, and repeated that he strongly denied
all other allegations against him.
In July 2010, Polanski was released from Swiss house arrest
after authorities decided against extradition because of
potential technical faults in the U.S. request and because he
had for years come to Switzerland in good faith.
The New York Times has quoted Langer as saying she was speaking
out only now because she had read an account of another woman
who came forward in August and because her parents were no
longer alive.
(Reporting by Michael Shields; editing by John Stonestreet)
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