Section 14 Patents and Designs Act 1971

Section 14 of the Patents and Designs Act 1971 is about Right to registration. It is under ‘Designs’ of the Act. It provides as follows:

(1) Subject to this section, the right to registration of an industrial design shall be
vested in the statutory creator, that is to say, the person who, whether or not he is the true creator, is the first to file, or validly to claim a foreign priority for, an application for registration of the design.

(2) The true creator shall be entitled to be named as such in the register, and the entitlement in question shall not be modifiable by contract.

(3) If the essential elements of an application for the registration of an industrial design have been obtained by the purported applicant from the creation of another person without the consent of that other person both to the obtaining of those essential elements and to the filing of the application, all rights in the application and in any consequent registration shall be deemed to be transferred to that other person.

(4) Where an industrial design is created in the course of employment or in the execution of a contract for the performance of specified work, the ownership of the design shall be vested in the employer or, as the case may be, in the person who commissioned the work:

Provided that, where the creator is an employee, then, if his contract of employment does not require him to exercise any creative activity but he has in creating the design used data or means that his employment has put at his disposal–
(a) he shall be entitled to fair remuneration taking into account his salary and the
importance of the design which he has created; and
(b) the entitlement in question is not modifiable by contract and may be enforced
by civil proceedings.

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