Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
J Surg Res. 2022 Dec;280:248-257. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2022.07.016. Epub 2022 Aug 23.
Despite an increasing number of women pursuing careers in science, engineering, and medicine, gender disparities in patents persist. This study sought to analyze trends in inventor's gender for surgical device patents filed and granted in Canada and the United States from 2015 to 2019.
This study analyzed patents filed and granted by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) in the category of "Diagnosis; Surgery; Identification" and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in the category of "Surgery" from 2015 to 2019. The gender of the patent applicants was determined using a gender algorithm that predicts gender based on first names. Gender matches with names having a probability of less than 95% were excluded.
We identified 14,312 inventors on patents filed and 12,737 inventors on patents granted by the CIPO for "Diagnosis; Surgery; Identification". In the USPTO category of "Surgery," we identified 75,890 inventors on patents filed and 44,842 inventors on patents granted. Female inventors accounted for 7%-10% of inventors from 2015 to 2019 for both patents filed and granted. The proportion of female inventors on patents granted was significantly lower than for patents filed for four of the 5 y analyzed for both the USPTO and CIPO.
Female representation in surgical device patenting has stagnated, between 7 and 10%, from 2015 to 2019 in Canada and the United States. This underrepresentation of female inventors in surgical device patenting represents sizable gender disparity.
尽管越来越多的女性从事科学、工程和医学领域的工作，但专利领域的性别差距仍然存在。本研究旨在分析 2015 年至 2019 年期间加拿大和美国提交并获得的外科设备专利的发明人的性别趋势。
本研究分析了 2015 年至 2019 年期间加拿大知识产权局（CIPO）在“诊断；手术；鉴定”类别中提交和授予的专利，以及美国专利商标局（USPTO）在“手术”类别中提交和授予的专利。专利申请人的性别是使用一种性别算法确定的，该算法根据名字预测性别。与名字匹配概率低于 95%的性别匹配被排除在外。
我们在 CIPO 为“诊断；手术；鉴定”提交的专利中确定了 14312 位发明人，在授予的专利中确定了 12737 位发明人。在 USPTO 的“手术”类别中，我们在提交的专利中确定了 75890 位发明人，在授予的专利中确定了 44842 位发明人。2015 年至 2019 年，女性发明人在提交和授予的专利中占发明人总数的 7%-10%。在分析的 5 年中，有 4 年，USPTO 和 CIPO 的授予专利中的女性发明人比例均明显低于提交专利中的女性发明人比例。
在加拿大和美国，2015 年至 2019 年，女性在外科设备专利中的代表性一直停滞在 7%至 10%之间。女性发明人在外科设备专利中的代表性不足，这代表了相当大的性别差距。
