Patent outcomes and inventors’ gender

Using a United States Patent and Trademark Office dataset with name-based gender attribution for inventors, we examine gender differences in US patent outcomes. On average, patent teams with at least one woman inventor not only have fewer citations (as documented in recent studies), but are also less likely to have related patents granted in Europe and Japan (triadic grants) and less likely to be renewed. Patent assignees account for a large share of the gender gap, but disparities remain even after controlling for technology, application year, patent examiner and assignee fixed effects. However, within organizations, we find no significant gender differences in outcomes for sole-inventor patents. Instead, we find that mixed-gender teams led by men have, on average, weaker outcomes than all-men teams. A small gap in citations and triadic grants remains even when we control for the identity of the first inventor. We discuss potential mechanisms and implications of these findings.