Gender bias in patenting process

Yukai Wang, Zhongkai Yang, Lanjian Liu and Xianwen Wang

Journal of Informetrics, 2020, vol. 14, issue 3

Abstract: Collaboration among inventors is very important in patenting an invention. Inventors collaborate based on their professional knowledge and experience. Because of the non-disclosure nature of the invention process, it is difficult to test the factors influencing collaboration between inventors, e.g., gender bias. In this study, employing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) dataset with 6.64 million patents, we have identified the gender of 4.66 million inventors, including 2.12 million lead inventors and 2.54 million joint inventors. We find that women are underrepresented in the patent collaboration process and that both genders have strong preference for same-gender inventors. Moreover, even in those fields that have equal proportions of male and female inventors, gender bias persists. These results highlight the need to intensify efforts to combat gender bias in the patenting process rather than focusing solely on the lack of equal gender representation in the numerical proportions.

Keywords: Gender bias; Patent; Inventor; USPTO (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157719303724
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:14:y:2020:i:3:s1751157719303724

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2020.101046

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Informetrics is currently edited by Leo Egghe

More articles in Journal of Informetrics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().