USPTO Proposes National Strategy to Incentivize Inclusive Innovation
“The stated goal of facilitating commercialization in particular may seem contradictory to some, considering the Administration’s recent proposal to expand the scope of march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act”
Source: USPTO National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation
The United States Patent and Trademark (USPTO) today announced a “National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation” in advance of a World IP Day event being held on Capitol Hill. The Strategy was developed with support from the Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI2) and, according to a USPTO press release, “aims to lift communities, grow the economy, create quality jobs, and address global challenges by increasing participation in STEM, inventorship and innovation among youth and those from historically underrepresented and underresourced communities.”
As part of its strategic plan for fiscal years 2022 through 2026, the U.S. Commerce Department in 2022 tasked the USPTO with collaborating with the CI2 and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to help independent inventors and small businesses obtain resources through other agencies to promote the commercialization of their inventions, as well as obtain both U.S. and foreign IP rights for protecting those inventions.
Today’s Strategy focuses on four key “cornerstones”: 1) Inspiring new generations of innovators; 2) Educating and empowering innovators; 3) Advancing inclusive innovation across government and other areas; and 4) Bringing innovation to market. In order to facilitate these broad goals, the report also makes 11 specific recommendations:
- Standardize and scale youth innovation education (Cornerstone 1)
- Provide resources, training, and support to empower educators to teach innovation (Cornerstone 1)
- Provide youth coaching, mentoring, and career awareness to foster and support long-term interest and capabilities in innovation (Cornerstone 1)
- Expand research opportunities to a broad and diverse set of institutions in higher education (Cornerstone 2)
- Foster innovation and entrepreneurship learning and experiences in post-secondary education (Cornerstone 2)
- Provide post-secondary mentoring and internship opportunities to enable innovation (Cornerstone 2)
- Encourage and support an inclusive workforce across public and private organizations (Cornerstone 3)
- Cultivate innovation more broadly and equitably in organizations that innovate, including academic research institutions (Cornerstone 3)
- Equitably facilitate IP protection for all innovators and entrepreneurs (Cornerstone 4)
- Make entrepreneurship resources and support available to all (Cornerstone 4)
- Leverage and expand commercialization support and tech transfer for all (Cornerstone 4)
USPTO Director Kathi Vidal said in a statement that the strategy “provides a call to action and roadmap to achieve innovative success.”
The strategy also complements the National Entrepreneurship Strategy recently released by the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE), of which Vidal is a co-chair, and which includes “recommendations for how the U.S. Department of Commerce, the federal government, and the private sector can foster an entrepreneurship ecosystem that ensures the United States leads in critical technology innovation.”
Is the USPTO Undermining Its Own Goals?
The stated goal of facilitating commercialization in particular may seem contradictory to some, considering the Administration’s recent proposal to expand the scope of march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act. Some IP stakeholders noted this contradiction following the Office’s recent request for comment seeking “input on what more the Agency can do to accelerate and incentivize commercialization of innovation” more generally. “If the administration were really interested in incentivizing innovation, they’d focus on bolstering the law that is the backbone of America’s tech transfer system: The Bayh-Dole Act,” wrote Chris Israel, Executive Director of the Alliance of U.S. Startups & Inventors for Jobs, in an op-ed for IPWatchdog.
Today’s Strategy explains that venture capital funding is not evenly distributed to the under-represented inventor communities. It cites to studies from 2017 and 2018 that found that 2% of venture capital was invested in startups with exclusively female founders, 1% of venture capital was invested in companies with Black founders, and less than 2% was invested in companies with Hispanic founders.
According to the report, those numbers are getting worse, not better. “In 2023, less than 0.5% of venture capital dollars were invested in businesses with Black founders” and White men controlled 93% of the venture capital dollars, said the report.
But Israel pointed out in his op-ed on the USPTO’s RFC that if the Biden administration moves forward with its march-in framework, “many venture capitalists will stop investing in efforts to commercialize federally funded technologies.” This could presumably make the inequities even worse.
IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn said that increasing federal funding to help underrepresented communities innovate might not be helpful if the framework becomes final. “Ironically, by exercising march-in rights where products are actually on the market and not being shelved the government will make it less likely that the private sector will license anything from the federal government because the risk is just too great that if you do accept the extraordinarily modest funding Uncle Sam provides, patent rights will be stripped,” Quinn explained. “That will make doing a patent deal with the federal government a game of Russian Roulette.”
The Strategy concluded by calling on organizations across all sectors of the innovation community to collaborate “to collect and disseminate information, best practices, and resources.”
Eileen McDermott
Eileen McDermott is the Editor-in-Chief of IPWatchdog.com. Eileen is a veteran IP and legal journalist, and no stranger to the intellectual property world, having held editorial and managerial positions at […see more]
