Innovators
Posted: 9 Apr 2018 Last revised: 2 May 2018
Date Written: April 8, 2018
Abstract
This Article argues for a shift in how we view and use the patent system, to a way of understanding and cultivating innovators that patent, not just patented innovation, for three reasons. First, who is innovating and where has relevance to a myriad of current social and policy debates, including the participation of women and minorities in innovation, high-skilled immigration, and national competitiveness. Second, though largely overlooked by academics, America’s patent system has long been innovator-, not only innovation-driven, and scholarly engagement can improve the quality of relevant policymaking. Third, the application of new computational tools to open patent datasets makes it possible to more easily approximate and track salient details about innovators that patent - including the geography and settings in which they innovate and the personal demographic traits of innovators - enabling the tailoring and tracking of impacts of interventions on disparate groups of innovators. This Article details why and how to do so by applying novel empirical methods to profiling patentees, revealing broad shifts over the past four decades, and demonstrating—through three mini-case studies pertaining to diversity in the technology sector, the promotion of small and individual inventors, and innovation in medical diagnostic technologies—how improving our understanding of innovators can improve our promotion of innovation.
Keywords: patents, innovators
JEL Classification: O34, O31, K100
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation