USPTO issued a report on progress and potential of women inventors today. This report updates and expands upon a prior report examining trends and characteristics of participation in the U.S. patent system by women.
“The U.S. patent system improves the lives of Americans by encouraging and strengthening innovation. For this system to be most effective, all Americans must have the opportunity to reap the personal and commercial benefits of applying for and receiving patent protection. In a 2019 report, “Progress and Potential: A profile of women inventors on U.S. patents,” the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) investigated the participation of U.S.-based women inventor-patentees in the U.S. patent system.1It examined the trends and characteristics of women’s participation and found that women were under-represented. This update improves our understanding of women’s participation as inventor-patentees in two ways. First, it updates the findings from the 2019 report using three years of new data, covering January 2017 through December 2019. Second, it provides an analysis of entry by women into the patent system. In particular, it looks at the number and share of new women inventor-patentees and the degree to which those women remain active by patenting again within the next five years. The updates and new information presented in this report rely heavily on PatentsView—a free, online platform for visualizing, disseminating, and promoting a better understanding of U.S. patent data supported by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Economist.”
https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OCE-DH-Progress-Potential-2020.pdf