Smashing the Silicon Ceiling: Stronger IPR and Female Participation in Chinese Ai Patenting

Abstract

Do stronger intellectual property rights incentivize female participation in innovation? We provide new evidence on this question using a unique database of artificial intelligence patents publicly shared by the USPTO. Our identification strategy leverages China’s WTO TRIPs accession of 2002. We find a significant rise in the number of female inventors and an increase in patents with females on inventor teams vis-a-vis a control group of countries. We also find that the quality of Chinese AI patents with female inventors on the team improved with a strong IPR. Results go through various robustness checks and have important policy implications.

Keywords: Gender and Innovation, Intellectual Property Rights, China