Collaboration among inventors is very important in patenting an invention. Inventors collaborate based on their professional knowledge and experience. Because of the non-disclosure nature of the invention process, it is difficult to test the factors influencing collaboration between inventors, e.g., gender bias. In this study, employing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) dataset with 6.64 million patents, we have identified the gender of 4.66 million inventors, including 2.12 million lead inventors and 2.54 million joint inventors. We find that women are underrepresented in the patent collaboration process and that both genders have strong preference for same-gender inventors. Moreover, even in those fields that have equal proportions of male and female inventors, gender bias persists. These results highlight the need to intensify efforts to combat gender bias in the patenting process rather than focusing solely on the lack of equal gender representation in the numerical proportions.

发明人之间的合作对于获得一项发明专利非常重要。发明人根据他们的专业知识和经验进行合作。由于本发明方法的非公开性质，因此难以测试影响发明者之间合作的因素，例如性别偏见。在这项研究中，我们利用拥有664万项专利的美国专利商标局（USPTO）数据集，确定了466万发明者的性别，其中包括212万主要发明者和254万共同发明者。我们发现，女性在专利合作过程中所占的比例不足，而且两种性别都对同性别发明者有强烈的偏好。而且，即使在男女发明者比例相等的领域中，性别偏见仍然存在。