Scott Barker, in-house counsel at Micron Technology, and Mercedes Meyer, a partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath. Courtesy photos.

Attorney Mercedes Meyer attended an event three years ago about closing the patent gender gap, and she was shocked by the statistics on how few patents were held by women.

When she shared the numbers—only about 12% of all patents are held by women—with her colleagues in the Intellectual Property Owners Association, they were equally shocked and decided to do something about it.

"We decided we can fix this," Meyer told Corporate Counsel. "We know the issues, the patent process, the people." Meyer is an intellectual property partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Drinker Biddle & Reath.

She joined forces with Michelle Bugbee, senior intellectual property counsel at Eastman Chemical Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts; and Sandra Nowak, assistant chief IP counsel at 3M Innovative Properties in St. Paul, Minnesota. Bugbee and Nowak co-chaired the association's Women in IP Committee that took on the gender parity project.

The result is a just-released tool kit that serves as a four-step blueprint for companies to assess and cultivate gender parity in innovation. Included is a massive amount of data along with self-evaluation tools and sample communications and presentations for any company to use.

The kit is available to the public on the association's website.

The 96-page tool kit "is a crowdsourcing solution to an implicit bias problem that is influencing corporate and university bottom lines," Meyer said. If women inventors fail to bring forward their creative ideas, then American business ultimately suffers because of the "lost Edisons and Einsteins," she explained.

New research turned up statistics showing that China and Korea, with nearly 50% of patents held by women, are far ahead of the U.S. on gender parity in the field. Even Poland is ahead of the U.S., she added.

Around the same time that Meyer began working on the parity problem, Scott Barker, director of global patent development at Micron Technology Inc. in Boise, Idaho, was doing his own patent study.

"We were looking at the makeup of our most prolific inventors, where we were getting the most innovation from, in an effort to strengthen our portfolio," Barker said. "We made the shocking discovery about the lack of gender diversity [among the inventors]."

When Barker heard that Meyer and her group had identified the problem and were working on a solution, he emailed Meyer and asked how he could help.

Micron became one of several companies that served as early testers of the tool kit, providing feedback and ideas for changes. Barker said he received strong support from his general counsel as well as the company CEO.

"We started by having recurring brown-bag lunches, to bring awareness of the problem," Barker said. "We invited female engineers to participate and brought in mentors. Periodically, I talked with Mercedes, giving her input and picking her brain about what others were doing."

The result: "We've seen the number of women inventors at Micron increase by about 70%," he said. Barker said he concentrated on reaching out to newer women engineers and actively pulled them into the patent process.

Both Meyer and Barker said the gender parity issue is complicated by many factors. For one thing, Barker said he found the company's patent submission committee was male-dominated.

Meyer said young women have been conditioned not to expect or ask for a raise, a promotion or recognition. "The invention process is one of asking [for recognition]," she explained, "by submitting an invention disclosure."

She said one of the simplest solutions "is to look at your invention disclosure process. Is it readily accessible, and do people know about it, and is it easily utilized?" The next step is to help and encourage women inventors to use the process.

Among the statistics offered is a chart showing which companies had the highest percentage rate of women inventors, as well as the highest number of woman inventors between 2007 and 2016. Procter & Gamble Co., for example, scored the highest rate, nearly 30% of its inventors were women. It trailed well behind giants IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp., however, in sheer number of women inventors.

The chart shows about 16% of IBM's inventors were women, while Microsoft sits around 11%.

The Association of University Technology Managers Women Inventors Committee and its Barriers Subcommittee were key collaborators on the project.

Meyer and Barker said the tool kit is intended to be constantly evolving to include feedback and new data. It also provides a component aimed at law firms, to help educate and assist clients.