Deakin University

09/26/2022 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/25/2022 23:17

Study shows male named inventors have greater patent success

Lead researcher Dr Vicki Huang, a senior lecturer in intellectual property (IP) law at Deakin Law School, said the gender bias uncovered by her team was concerning given extensive investment encouraging women into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers.

"World-wide, most governments invest millions to encourage young women to study in STEM, but they keep falling out of the system," Dr Huang said.

"While we see more women than men enrolling as undergraduate STEM students, they do not seem to be crossing the bridge into post-graduate STEM roles and inventorship."

The study - published today in the UNSW Law Journal - analysed more than 300,000 patent applications to IP Australia over a 15-year period, and reverse engineered close to one million inventor names to assign them a probable gender. It found:

  • 90 per cent of applications had at least one male inventor
  • 24 per cent of applications had at least one female inventor (typically via a mixed gender team)
  • An inventor with a female sounding first name had a slightly lower odds of getting their patent application approved than a male named inventor
  • As the number of male names on a team grew, the odds of a successful application increased
  • These patterns were observed irrespective of scientific field, year of application or type of filing.

The results are consistent with similar research in the USA, where applications to the United States Patent and Trademark Office with a female sounding name were found to be less successful than male-named applicants or those with an undetermined gender.

Most applications for patents at IP Australia come from overseas, giving the Deakin study a more global perspective. For example, in 2020, 49 per cent of applications came from the US, followed by 9 per cent from Australia and from China, 6 per cent from Japan, and 5 per cent from Germany and from the UK.

Dr Huang said that securing patents was one important indicator of success for women in STEM.

"A patent is an intellectual property right and an economic tool. Ultimately the government is giving you a monopoly for 20 years so no one else can copy your invention," she said.

"This means you can set the price and you can licence your discovery. It's one of the most valuable ways you can monetise a new and inventive scientific idea.

"Inventors use patents to secure capital, so less women securing patents can mean less women succeeding in entrepreneurship. Academics and scientists also use patents to show expertise in their field and to progress in their career.

"Another issue is that many patents with female inventors tend to focus on female disease, so there could be a gender bias in the type of science being developed.

"We know women are just as capable as men, and the quality of patents are the same. If women aren't succeeding at the patent office, we need to find out why and fix it."

Dr Huang is applying for funding to continue her research to better understand the drivers of the patent gender gap.

She said previous theories had focused firmly on the potential gender bias of patent examiners and officials. But Dr Huang believes the issue is much bigger than that.

"I don't think it's as simple as just bias in a handful of patent officers, I want to dispel that idea," she said.

"We suspect there are larger, systematic, and institutional biases that impact women who endeavour to become inventors. There may also be country and cultural differences at play given IP Australia receives so many international applications.

"For example, patent applications can be expensive, and women might have less access than men to the funding or mentoring needed to get through the prosecution phase with a patent examiner.

"The first step to fixing the problem is recognising that a problem exists, which is what we have done in this study. We hope it starts a conversation that causes people to reflect on their own biases and stimulates change."

Ultimately, Dr Huang hopes further research will help pinpoint effective ways women can be supported to achieve higher success at the patent office. But in the meantime, she said increasing the number of women on mixed gender teams on patent applications was a good next step.