Inclusive Innovation Ecosystems

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has just released it’s first-ever National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation in 2024, with support from the Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI2 ). The study includes a comprehensive review of the state of U.S. inclusiveness, highlights existing disparities, and explores opportunities to expand U.S. innovation in an equitable way. This strategy focuses primarily on innovation in STEM fields and the role of the patent system in the constitutional aim of incentivizing innovation and bringing that innovation to impact.

Click here for the full USPTO’s national strategy.

Invent Together, an alliance focused on broadening participation in inventing and patenting, published a new study in April 2024 titled “The Role of Trust in Advancing Equity in Innovation.” The study highlighted trust as a pivotal factor in an individual’s decision to pursue a patent for a new product or technology. The study identified significant trust gaps among women and people of color, which deter their participation in inventing and patenting. The study deepens our understanding of the barriers to equity in innovation and underscores the urgent need to build trust within the innovation ecosystem to safeguard U.S. global technology leadership.

Click here for the official press release and full study.

This report provides an overview of promising policies and programs for improving IP diversity, focusing on Europe. Utsav Bahl, our research associate, developed the analysis.

Across regions, women are using IP tools, such as patents, less than men. This analysis focuses on gender – but IP gaps affecting other historically underrepresented groups warrant equal attention from policymakers. Apart from identifying key policies, we note that a crucial first step is disaggregated data collection and analysis, to quantify IP gaps and identify causes, then to track progress in dismantling them over time.

This document was created as part of the initial research for a wider paper in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on increasing access to IP for women.

This blog by the Center for Strategic and International Studies presents data relating to the United States’ CHIPS and Science Act. The authors argue that there is not enough funding approved to date, with billions of dollars missing from what was expected. They express concerns that this situation, if left unchecked, may affect the US competitive position in relation to critical high tech sectors.

Click here to read the full blog.

In 2022, the European Patent Office (EPO) released this study providing evidence and insights on gender and patenting across Europe. The study reveals that just 13.2% of inventors in Europe are women. While the percentage has been steadily rising, there is clearly still work to be done to close the patenting gender gap.

This report presents data regarding gender and patenting across a wide range of countries, for different time periods, patent application profiles, and in different technology fields. The report indicates that the gender gap in relation to patenting could be harming technological progress, for European societies as a whole, given that the ingenuity of all people is not being fully leveraged. It recommends that policymakers enact policies and programs to close the gap and increase access to patents for female inventors.

Click here to read the report.

The OECD has a new publication reporting on discussions that were held at its SME and Entrepreneurship Ministerial Meeting, 27-28 June 2023. With the global context having radically evolved in the last three years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine conflict, and other challenges, policies will also need to evolve in order to ensure that SMEs are resilient and have access to the support they require. The publication notes the need to find a balance between guaranteeing long-run financial support and providing the right conditions for SMEs to compete and become more productive. Furthermore, the policies need to be people-centred and granular as SMEs can widely differ, with no one policy fitting all of their collective needs.

Click here to read the full paper.

New research from WIPO about gender representation on PCT applications reveals that China has been able to grow the quantity of women inventors at nearly double the rate of the U.S. in recent decades, with 42% female inventors in China compared to 22% in the U.S. This Fortune article from Holly Fechner, the Executive Director of Invent Together, highlights the importance of utilizing the ideas and ingenuity of female inventors as well as those from other historically underrepresented groups, especially since global competition in technology is so intense and thus the stakes are high.

Click here to read the full article.

This insightful article from LINE Publication features Laurie Self and Holly Fechner as they highlight the progress that is being made to make the patent system as accessible as possible.

Less than 13% of all inventors listed on U.S. patents are women and Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and multiracial Americans account for even less at only 8% of all U.S. inventors. Qualcomm and Invent Together are partnering to try and tackle this inequality, as well as signifying the importance of universities, non-profits and other stakeholders in understanding the diversity gaps and helping to close them.

Click here to read the article