(Originally published by Science on December 7, 2023)

Expanding who gets credit for invention may boost participation in innovation

Inequality among patent inventors is a policy concern. For example, in the United States, if women, racial minorities, and people from low-income backgrounds invented at the same rate as that of high-income white men, the overall invention rate would quadruple (1). Disparities in patenting are far larger than disparities in other measures of innovation, such as scientific paper authorship or STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce participation (2).

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