Intellectual Property Act 2014
| Long title | An Act to make provision about intellectual property. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 2014 c. 18 |
| Introduced by | The Viscount Younger of Leckie 9 May 2013 |
| Territorial extent | United Kingdom |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 14 May 2014 |
| Commencement | 1 October 2014 |
Status: Current legislation | |
| History of passage through Parliament | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
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. The purpose of the legislation was to update copyright law, in particular design and patent law. The law arose as a result of Sir Ian Hargreaves' Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, an independent report published in May 2011.
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, in order to reduce the scope for legal protection of minor aspects of unregistered designs. 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.