Closing the Inventorship Gap

Women Hold 12.8% of U.S. Patents. They Make Up 30% of the STEM Workforce.

The gap isn't talent — it's disclosure. A Nature study of 3.7 million U.S. patents found women's patents demonstrate higher novelty, originality, and technological generality. The inventions exist. The filing process loses them.

See How Automated Scanning Helps

Free scan. No forms. No patent language required.

The numbers.

Research from USPTO, WIPO, and peer-reviewed studies paints a consistent picture: women innovate at high rates but patent at low rates. The gap is structural, not intellectual.

12.8%

Women as share of U.S. patent inventors

2061

Projected year for global gender parity in patenting

50%

Of the gender grant gap explained by abandonment after rejection

Of issued patents with all-women inventor teams

The 12.8% isn't evenly distributed. Women represent roughly 30% of inventors in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, 18% in chemistry, but just 6% in mechanical engineering. In software and electrical engineering, the rate falls between these extremes. The fields with the fewest women inventors are the same ones producing the most patents.

Sources: USPTO (2020), WIPO (2024), Nature (2025), Scientific Reports (2025)

We measured this across 170 companies → Our Patent Representation Gap Index shows the gap company by company, with trend data showing who is improving.

Five structural barriers between innovation and patent protection.

These barriers affect anyone who doesn't already know the patent system, but research shows they disproportionately reduce filing rates among women in STEM.

Self-identification gap

Research shows women in STEM are less likely to identify their work as "inventive," even when it meets patentability criteria. If the process requires you to recognize your own invention first, it filters out people who don't see themselves as inventors.

Completeness bias

Studies indicate women tend to wait until work feels finished before disclosing. Men disclose earlier in the development cycle. Early-stage innovations that could become patents get passed over because they don't feel "ready."

Intimidating disclosure process

Invention disclosure forms require articulating novelty in patent-specific language. Without a mentor who has filed before, the process is opaque. Women have less access to those mentors in most organizations.

Time burden

Patent disclosure competes with research, teaching, committee work, and caregiving. A process that takes hours instead of minutes limits who can participate, regardless of the quality of their innovations.

Nobody asked

If an organization doesn't proactively scan for innovations, only people who self-promote get their inventions protected. That's a systemic filter that disadvantages women, junior engineers, and anyone without a direct line to the IP team.

What if the tool asked every line of code the same question?

ObviouslyNot's patent scanner analyzes source code and surfaces strategic concepts automatically. It doesn't filter by who wrote the code, who knows the patent attorney, or who considers their work "inventive enough."

Paste a repo URL

No need to self-identify as an inventor. The scanner analyzes your codebase for distinctive patterns automatically. First scan is free. Takes minutes, not hours.

Review scored concepts

The scanner surfaces strategic concepts with evidence citations from the actual code. Each concept includes a distinctiveness score and technical detail, pre-structured as a disclosure ready for review with a patent attorney. No jargon, no guesswork, no prior patent experience needed.

Protect what you built

Export discoveries as draft provisional applications (USPTO fees start at $65 for individual filers) or share with a patent attorney for review and filing. Our technical disclosure pipeline is free while in beta. The barrier drops from "know the patent system" to "paste a link."

Targeted support works.

A single USPTO pilot program for unrepresented inventors increased female applicants' grant rates by 16.8%. The bottleneck isn't talent or patent quality. It's getting to disclosure in the first place.

The research

Once women disclose, university support infrastructure helps equalize prosecution outcomes. Mixed-gender teams produce the most disruptive inventions. The innovation is there. The filing process filters it out.

Scientific Reports, 2025

The product answer

ObviouslyNot removes the disclosure bottleneck entirely. The scanner generates structured technical disclosures automatically from code. No blank forms, no patent language, no self-assessment required.

For universities and tech transfer offices.

University tech transfer offices are where the gender gap is most documented, and most fixable. The scanner surfaces innovations from researchers who would never have disclosed on their own.

Scan research repos

Connect faculty GitHub repos or internal GitLab instances. The scanner identifies distinctive implementations from code that would otherwise go unprotected.

Structured disclosures, not blank forms

Researchers review pre-generated technical disclosures with evidence from their code, not intimidating blank invention disclosure forms that require patent expertise.

Privacy-first

The local scanner runs entirely on your infrastructure. Source code never leaves your network. No compliance review required.

Your engineering team is sitting on unfiled patents.

When only self-promoters disclose, you miss innovations from women, junior engineers, underrepresented groups, and anyone who doesn't have a relationship with your IP team. The scanner asks every line of code the same question, regardless of who wrote it.

See how it works for patent attorneys

Why most software patents start too late

Innovation doesn't have a gender. Your patent portfolio shouldn't either.

Start a Free Scan

Or download the local scanner: free, private, runs on your machine.

Found something worth trying to protect? Our technical disclosure pipeline generates a technical description of your strategic concept from your scan results. Take this to a patent attorney to explore patentability. Free while in beta.