The Development of Women Inventors in U.S. Patents
The USPTO recently released a report outlining and analyzing various telling characteristics of women inventors in United States. Among other indicators, it explores the employment sectors contributing the most patents from women.
The report used information collected from patents filed from 1976 to 2016, and overall the trends showed an increase in women’s share of total patenting. This increase is positive, but growth is still slow. The number of patents with at least one woman inventor increased as well, going from seven percent to twenty-one percent over thirty-six years.
The study notes that women inventor rates are greater in states that rely on more technological industry and have more women participating in the total workforce. Patents that included women inventors also tend to be in product or service areas where females have patented things in the past.
Overall, women inventors are on the rise and patents that include women inventors are more common today than in the past. But the lack of expansion into different fields and relatively slow growth of patents issued to female inventors, along with the low female inventor numbers overall suggests there is opportunity for women to be much more directly involved in inventing and commercialization of products and services.
The USPTO’s article and link to the report, “Progress and Potential: A profile of women inventors on U.S. patents” can be found at https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/ip-policy/economic-research/progress-potential?utm_campaign=subscriptioncenter&utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=