Promoting gender diversity at the US Patent Bar

When law student Mary Hannon published an academic article without fanfare in autumn 2020, she had little inkling of the ripples it would send throughout IP and beyond. Or that it would lead to a clamour for change at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and provoke ongoing debate among patent practitioners.

The paper, “The Patent Bar Gender Gap: Expanding the Eligibility Requirements to Foster Inclusion and Innovation in the US Patent System”, argues that there are systemic barriers facing women at the US Patent Bar, and proposes solutions to dismantle them.

When it comes to the demographics of patent practitioners, details are scant because the USPTO does not collect or provide substantial demographic data. But Saurabh Vishnubhakat, professor at Texas A&M University, suggested in his 2014 study, “Gender Diversity in the Patent Bar”, that only 18% of patent practitioners were women.

Six years after that study, Hannon, then a patent agent at Marshall, Gerstein & Borun in Chicago, opened her own article with a pithy, yet damning, assertion. “Qualified women continue to be unnecessarily excluded from membership in the Patent Bar as a result of the perpetuation of an institutionally biased and archaic set of scientific and technical requirements by the USPTO,” she wrote.

A long silence

Hannon further noted that while the USPTO had not failed to recognise the lack of equal gender representation among innovators in the US, “it has remained silent on the lack of gender diversity within its own Patent Bar”.

Her paper disrupted this silence, attracting high profile attention and a demand for answers. In December, senators Thom Tillis, Mazie Hirono and Chris Coons wrote to the USPTO citing concerns about the issues raised by Hannon.