Abstract

Research on the patent activity of men and women should not be limited to an examination of their overall numbers. In this study, there is an indication of the areas of science, technology and the economy in which different patent activity for men and women appears. Data on the inventors is included in the patent description. It can therefore be said that the number of patent inventors is a measure of creative activity. However, patent databases currently do not provide statistics on the types of entities that are inventors of patents, or their membership in a particular geographic area, or gender. It is therefore necessary to mine this kind of information from a rich patent description. Hence, in this paper three research tasks are proposed. The first was to determine the dynamics of change in inventors from Poland and non-Polish for patents granted by the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland (Polish Patent Office). The second aim of the study was to determine the dynamics of changes in the activity of men and women who are the inventors of patents granted by the Polish Patent Office. The third objective of the research was to identify the size and participation of women and men patent activity in industries and areas of technology. Reference to creative patent activity for men and women to the economy and technology is obtained through the use concordance tables. The proposed concept for the measure of creative patent activity in Poland, in conjunction with the various branches of the economy, made it possible to identify the leading areas for men and women in this activity (chemistry), as well as identify joint areas (food), where cooperation between men and women, expressed in common patent activity, reaches its highest level.

Key words: inventions and innovations, research and development, intellectual property, intellectual capital

Introduction

Innovation is associated with the activity of scientific-research, social, and economic agents. It applies to almost all areas of socioeconomic development (Christensen et al., 2004; Davila et al., 2006; DeGraff and Quinn, 2007; Dyer et al., 2011). One of the primary symptoms of innovative activity, including the development of innovation and increase in innovative capacity, is patent activity.