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]
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]
