Adschai:
here is an example for class.weights (isn't it on the help page?):
data(iris)
i2 <- iris
levels(i2$Species)[3] <- "versicolor"
summary(i2$Species)
wts <- 100 / table(i2$Species)
wts
m <- svm(Species ~ ., data = i2, class.weights = wts)
Cheers,
David