People

Fewer people are winning patents, and most of them are still men

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has new figures on the gender diversity of people winning patents. The numbers don't look good.

Fewer people are winning patents, and most of them are still men

Yet another extremely important invention from some man.

Photo: David Zaitz/Getty Images

If you hold a patent in the U.S., chances are you're a man.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released Tuesday its most recent "Progress and Potential" report, which dives into the gender makeup of the people who have been awarded patents by the office over the years. Listed as a "major finding" in the report is the fact that the number of patents awarded with at least one woman inventor listed increased from 20.7% in 2016 to 21.9% in 2019. That's an increase of just 1.2 percentage points.

While patents can be awarded for innovations in just about any field, many of the top patent winners are tech companies. IBM alone has received more than 140,000 patents over the years and has been the single largest winner of patents in the U.S. each year for nearly 30 years. And according to the USPTO's report, roughly 41% of the women who win patents in the U.S. are located in four major tech-hub states: California, Massachusetts, New York and Texas.

So perhaps it's unsurprising that so few women are patent holders in the U.S., given how male-dominated the tech industry is. About 43% of Amazon employees identify as women; 37% at Facebook; 33% at Apple; 32.5% at Google; and just 29% at Microsoft. And those numbers tend to drop when you only look at technical roles within these companies — only about 26% of computing roles in the U.S. are filled by women.

But the good news is that these numbers are at least rising and not falling. While still a relatively small cadre, the percentage of women inventors has grown: It stood at less than 5% in 1980, whereas women accounted for more than 17% of the inventors on U.S. patents in 2019. The percentage of women on patents is also up in 45 states when comparing 2007 to 2016 and 2007 to 2019, the USPTO report said. (Only Hawaii, Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi and North Dakota saw a contraction during that time.)

And many tech firms on the list of companies with the most awarded patents by the USPTO also increased the rate at which they had women listed as inventors on patents. IBM, Xerox, Oracle, Microsoft, Alphabet, Intel, Amazon, Adobe, Apple, Cisco and Honeywell all saw a jump in the percentage of women on patents over the last four years. That being said, the biggest jump was from 3M, which saw only 1.35 percentage-point increase over that time.

 Mike Murphy

Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the former director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.

patents diversity
Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep Reading Show less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

cryptocurrency blockchain bitcoin lawsuit
sponsored content
Sponsored Content

How is technological innovation breaking down barriers and increasing access to financial services?

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep Reading Show less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
sponsored sponsored content
amazon web services
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep Reading Show less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

aws amazon web services cloud computing analytics data analytics adam selipsky

Farewell from Protocol

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep Reading Show less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

machine learning
Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep Reading Show less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

mlops ai machine learning
Latest Stories
Bulletins