Endless Frontier Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, I would like to thank Senator Tillis for working with me on this amendment, amendment No. 1517, to the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which comes from our work on the IDEA Act, a bill that passed the Judiciary Committee last month with bipartisan support.
Promoting innovation is key to ensuring the United States remains competitive in an increasingly competitive global economy. Unfortunately, the limited data that is available suggests large segments of American society are not engaging with a key component of the innovation economy, the U.S. patent system.
Women make up only 13 percent of inventors. Black and Hispanic college graduates patent at approximately half the rate of their White counterparts. Closing these patent gaps would turbocharge the U.S. economy.
One study found that including more women and Black Americans in the early stages of innovation could grow our economy by 3.3 percent. Hold that thought. Another found that eliminating the patent gap for women with science and engineering degrees alone would grow the economy by another 2.7 percent. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of growth to our economy.
But if we have any hope of closing these patent gaps, we must first get a firm grasp on who is and who is not using the patent system. Unfortunately, the PTO--Patent and Trademark Office--does not collect demographic data on applicants. As a result, researchers are forced to guess an applicant's gender based on his or her name, determine an applicant's race by cross-referencing census data, or explore other options that are time-consuming, unreliable, or both.
Our amendment solves this problem. It would enable the PTO to collect demographic data from patent applicants on a volunteer basis. I want to repeat that. This is on a volunteer basis. Nobody is forcing anyone to provide this kind of information. This data could then be analyzed by the PTO and outside researchers to identify where patent gaps exist and how to address them.
Let me be clear. Simply providing researchers more data would not solve the patent gaps facing women, racial minorities, and so many others, but it is a critical first step. We need to have data with which to make decisions.
I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment.
Thank you.
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