Abstract
This chapter presents the results of the new aspect of patent statistics exploration which is the identification of women and men being inventors of patents and evaluation their creative activity. Two research objectives were formulated: first to explore the diversification of the dynamics of change for the patent activity of men and women and second, to identify the diversification of the accumulation of the patent activity of men and women for the entire period of 1999-2013 in the following countries under examination: Ireland, Poland, Hungary and Norway. The main conclusion is that the greatest dynamics of change in the number of women who were the creators of the patents was observed in Ireland 17.45% per year. The greatest patent activity of women from all the countries under analysis who were the creators of the patent was observed in the manufacture of chemicals, chemical products and fibers.
Top2. The Evaluation Method For The Diversification Of The Patent Activity Of Men And Women
The following research objectives were formulated in this study:
- 1.
To explore the diversification of the dynamics of change for the patent activity of men and women in selected countries;
- 2.
To identify the diversification of the accumulation of the patent activity of men and women in selected countries for the entire period under analysis.
The scope of the study was determined by the application of the EPO patent databases, which served as the data source, and IPC/NACE concordance tables (Okoń-Horodyńska, Wisła, Sierotowicz, 2012) as well as WIPO IPC/TECH concordance tables (WIPO, 2014b), which were the tool applied to achieve the second research objective. The study involves the period of 1999 – 2013 defined by the patent grant date, thanks to the completeness of the descriptions available from the EPO database. As the source data does not include information about the inventor’s gender, the numbers of male and female inventors were identified on the basis of male and female first names provided in the descriptions of inventors.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Technological Creativity: Is highly fostered in “knowledge-creating” organizations for innovation of new products, new processes and services.
Innovation: Is a new or significantly improved idea, device, method or process.
Intellectual Property: Is a legal term that refers to creations of the mind.
Creativity: The ability to produce original, novel and unexpected work with high quality. It is the most essential factor in knowledge creation processes.
Inventors: Is the person or persons, women or men, who contributed to the claims of a patentable invention.
Invention: A new, useful process, that did not exist previously and that is recognized as the product of some unique creativity, intuition and genius.
Technological Diversification: At the level of the patent portfolio is the expansion of women and men being inventors into a wide range of technology fields.