Patents, Knowledge Governance and Gender

The world-over, patented inventions are predominantly attributed to male inventors. Some of this is due to the fact that there are fewer females in patent-heavy fields. However, more fundamentally, the gender patenting gap results from the fact that patent law itself is gendered – it is filled with multiple binaries that serve to maintain masculine domination over the disempowered. The immediate reaction to this is to de-gender patent law, but any attempt to expand patentability is countered by arguments that this harms the public domain. This article argues that attempting to de-gender patentability and balance this against the public domain is the wrong focus. The privatised and the public domain also constitute a constructed binary. An egalitarian knowledge governance system must go beyond socialised binaries