Sustainability > Diversity in Innovation: Women and Patents
Diversity in Innovation: Women and Patents
The United States Patent and Trademark Office published a study on the participation of women in the U.S. patent system and found that the women inventor rate, i.e., the share of inventors receiving U.S. patents who are women, was only 12.1% in 2016 and 12.8% in 2019.
These statistics motivated Hologic’s Intellectual Property (IP) group to understand how our internal data compared to these national findings. Following our review of Hologic’s women inventor statistics, the team has made concerted efforts to raise awareness of this topic and encourage more patent submissions from a broad spectrum of employees, including women.
We believe that these combined efforts will contribute to an increased number of inventions, including increased submissions from female employees.
22%
Women Inventor Rate1, exceeds the U.S. average
16%
Women’s Share of Patening at Hologic2, exceeds the U.S. average
Hologic’s IP group has taken the following actions:
- Updated our global policy for patent awards to further incentivize submissions.
- Broadened the mission of the internal Patent Review Board.
- Increased awareness of the invention disclosure process by organizing small group and global training sessions.
- Organized informal training sessions to educate the technical workforce on all aspects of patent law.
As a result of these efforts, we have seen an increase in the number of invention disclosures submitted by Hologic, including an increase in submissions by female employees.
1. Inventor Rate: Number of unique women inventors among all inventors on issued Hologic patents between 2007-2019 2. Share of Patenting: Share of women inventors among all inventors on patents issued to Hologic between 2007-2019