Invent Together, a coalition of businesses, universities, and organizations including AAU, sent a letter urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to keep the bipartisan Inventor Diversity for Economic Advancement (IDEA) Act in the final innovation and competitiveness legislation currently pending in Congress. The IDEA Act would direct the United States Patent and Trademark Office to collect demographic data on inventors who file for patents and to make that data publicly available for research.
According to Invent Together, “women, people of color, and lower-income Americans patent inventions at significantly lower rates than their representation in the population.” The IDEA Act would enable USTPO to “measure what matters” and build a “more diverse and inclusive innovation system, complete with new inventors, new ideas, and new technologies,” the letter says.