| 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| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
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]