Intellectual Property Act 2014

The Intellectual Property Act 2014 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 14 May 2014 after being introduced on 9 May 2013.^[1][3] The purpose of the legislation was to update copyright law, in particular design and patent law.^[4] The law arose as a result of Sir Ian Hargreaves' Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, an independent report published in May 2011.^[5][4]

Intellectual Property Act 2014

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title	An Act to make provision about intellectual property.
Citation	2014 c. 18
Introduced by	Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Commons) Viscount Younger of Leckie 9 May 2013 (Lords)
Territorial extent	United Kingdom
Dates
Royal assent	14 May 2014[1]
Commencement	1 October 2014[2]
Status: Current legislation
History of passage through Parliament
Text of statute as originally enacted

Implementation was in part effected on 1 October 2014. One effect of the law was to removed the words "any aspect of" from the legal definition of a design,^[6] in order to reduce the scope for legal protection of minor aspects of unregistered designs.^[7] For unregistered designs commissioned after 1 October 2014, via section 2 of the Act, initial ownership now belongs to the designer and not the client, unless the parties have contracted for ownership to be otherwise handled.^[4]