In 2022, just 1.8 per cent of Australian patent applications were by all-women teams, but half were all-male teams, according to research from Dr Vicki Huang.

It’s a remarkable statistic. In this episode of IP Provocations, we dig into the question of who the system recognises as inventors, and who it excludes. What is the correlation between patent protection and racial violence? Why is the stereotypical image of an inventor so often a white man like Thomas Edison or Elon Musk? And if the patent system excludes certain types of knowledge while favouring others, is it really doing its job of ensuring we all benefit from great ideas?

IP Provocations is hosted by the Melbourne Law School’s Professor Rebecca Giblin, and the University of Sydney’s Professor Kimberlee Weatherall. You can read more about Giblin’s work here, and Weatherall’s work here. This episode’s guests are:

Dr Anjali Vats is Associate Professor of Law, with a secondary appointment in Communication, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She is the author of The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans (Stanford University Press, 2020), which argues that US intellectual property myths are structured by implicit and explicit racialised understandings of who counts as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ intellectual property citizen, and thus deserves to be rewarded with intellectual property rights. Read more about Anjali at her University of Pittsburgh profile and read more about her book at Stanford University Press.

Dr Jessica Lai is Associate Professor in the School of Accounting and Commercial Law at the Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author of Patent Law and Women: Tackling Gender Bias in Knowledge Governance (2022, Routledge), which analyses the gendered nature of patent law and the knowledge governance system it supports. Read more about Jessica at her Victoria University profile and more about her book at Routledge.

We also discussed Dr Vicki Huang’s research into patents and gender in Australia. You can find her paper on this topic here.

IP Provocations is made with the support of IP Australia - we’re grateful to have had the opportunity to ask such broad ranging questions about the patent system to such interesting people, and get so many surprising answers. The IP Provocations team had full academic freedom in designing these conversations, and the views expressed are those of the individual speakers. 

This podcast was a project of IPRIA, the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, and had additional support from Melbourne Law School and Sydney Law School. The music was composed and recorded by Nina Buchanan. The hosts are Professors Rebecca Giblin and Kimberlee Weatherall, and research support was provided by barrister Amy Surkis. The producer is Greta Robenstone. Anders Furze filled in all the remaining gaps.  

IP Provocations acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands on which this podcast was produced, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation, and the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present. This podcast was produced on stolen land - sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.