New Intellectual Property Act 2014

After months of parliamentary debate and scrutiny, on 14 May 2014, the Intellectual Property Bill received Royal Assent and became the Intellectual Property Act 2014 (the Act). It will now be necessary to pass Secondary legislation to implement the measures contained in the Act, some of which are expected to come into force from October 2014, with all measures aimed at being implemented by late 2015.

The Act is the result of various design and patent consultations following the Hargreaves review of intellectual property published in 2011. The purpose of the Act is to modernise aspects of the law relating to intellectual property in order to encourage and drive economic growth and innovation and expand the design sector in general. There were concerns that the enforcement process for designs was prohibitively expensive, that the law was over-complicated and was not adequate to address the needs of the design sector. The Act aims to simplify and strengthen design