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). One driver of this “innovator-inventor” gap may be the nature of attribution practices: Bias in who receives credit and differing standards for patent inventorship and scientific paper authorship suggest that marginalized scientists are more likely to be excluded as inventors, limiting their future inventive opportunities. Recent legislation requires the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to address this problem of patenting disparities, and many firms and nonprofits have committed to improving inventor equity. Here, we identify opportunities to better understand what policy interventions would be most effective at closing these attribution gaps.