Female inventors listed in half of South Korea’s PCT applications: WIPO data
South Korea is leading the way towards gender parity in invention patents, according to statistics released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) today.
WIPO released the statement to mark World IP Day 2018, April 26.
In 2017 half of international patent applications from South Korea listed at least one female inventor, the highest among the biggest users of WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
In second place, 48% of China’s PCT applications listed at least one female inventor. Belgium (36%), Spain (35%), and the US (33%) followed.
Just 16% of Austria’s PCT applications included a female inventor.
Of top corporate users of the PCT, South Korea’s LG Chemicals had the highest rate of women listed as inventors (72%). It was followed by Switzerland’s Roche (69%) and France’s L'Oréal (67%).
Among the top 20 corporate PCT applications with a female inventor, nine organisations were American. No organisations in the UK were included in the top 20.
The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea was the academic institution with the highest proportion of female inventors (83%), closely followed by four Chinese institutions.
Only four American academic organisations were included in the top 20, and again no institutions from the UK made the cut.
Overall biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and chemistry are the fields which show the highest rates of women named as inventors in international patent applications, the WIPO release said.
Francis Gurry, director general of WIPO, said he is “heartened” by the high rates of women participating in research-intensive areas of the above fields: 58% of all WIPO international patent applications last year in biotechnology; 56% in pharmaceuticals; 55% in organic fine chemistry; and 51% in food chemistry.
The fields most lacking female inventors are mechanical elements (14%), engines and pumps (15%), and civil engineering (15%).
“International patent applications are an important benchmark for measuring innovative activity in the contemporary, global economy—and anything less than the achievement of full parity between men and women is a missed opportunity,” he added.
Though the increase is positive, Gurry noted that a “pronounced” gender gap remains.
Women were listed in 31% of the 224,000 international patent applications published by the organisation in 2017, equating to a 23% increase over the last decade.
Penny Gilbert, partner at Powell Gilbert, said only 7% of patents filed in the UK are by women, according to figures from the UK Intellectual Property Office.
She noted that female inventors often contribute to inventions in “gender-stereotypical fields such as clothing, baking, and domestic articles”.
“There are too few women engineers, scientists and IT specialists, so in order to see more women filing patents, we should be encouraging women to take up science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects at school and continuing with them at university or in STEM apprenticeships,” she suggested.
The World IP Day campaign, which started in 2000, is intended to promote recognition of the important role that IP rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity. This year’s campaign celebrates women who are powering change in the industry.
Gilbert said: “Hopefully World IP Day’s focus on the contributions of women to innovation will help inspire more girls and young women, giving them the confidence to think about careers in technical subjects—and about filing patents."
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