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This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on June 24, 2024. Watch the full video here.
Alexander Kersten: Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I am Alex Kersten. I’m the deputy director for the Renewing American Innovation Project here at CSIS. When we were launched at the beginning of 2021 there was no program at CSIS that focused on what made America competitive in the world and what the U.S. needed to do to continue to maintain that edge in the technological sphere in the 21st century. And in creating the program, it added a level of national security focus to technology issues, but also to what makes innovation in this country work in the way that it does, in the way that it is the envy of the world.
And I’m happy today to kick off this event with Invent Together. They’re a perfect partner in this endeavor as we highlight the role of trust in advancing equity and innovation. Their report that came out this past May, in it they examine the patent knowledge gaps, trust’s influence on pursuing patents, workplace culture, and the role of networks and support systems and purpose-driven innovation in looking at the overall landscape of the patent community, and who is pursuing patents in this country.
And with that, I would love to and be honored to introduce our distinguished speaker, Congressman Glenn Ivey of Maryland’s Fourth District. He is a – he was a partner at the law firm of Ivey & Levetown. He served as the state’s attorney for Prince George’s County from 2002 to 2011. And he was chief counsel to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle on the Hill, as well as counsel to Paul Sarbanes, and chief majority counsel to the Senate Banking Committee. He’s also worked for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and as an assistant U.S. attorney and chair of the Maryland Public Service Commission. He was also twice elected as the state’s attorney for Prince George’s County. And with that, I welcome Congressman Glenn Ivey. Thank you for joining us. (Applause.)
Representative Glenn Ivey (D-MD): Thanks for that introduction. How you doing? Uh-oh. (Laughs.) I did the VP rally today at University of Maryland, so how you doing was like they were jumping out of their seats. (Laughter.) So, but I know it’s the afternoon and you had big lunches and everything. But, no, thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the chance to come out and speak to you, and especially about this topic.
The Invent Together Survey I thought was, and the report, was an eye opener for me in a lot of ways. But it also confirmed a lot of my experiences from private practice as well. And so I want to talk a little bit about their findings. I was joking with them backstage there a few minutes ago, because they’re going to do the presentation after I do the speech. And they’ve got the slides and everything. I said, this feels a little bit like a quiz, so I hope I get it right. (Laughter.) Because I went through the report, you know. But I did want to thank them for the work that they’ve done, because the timing really couldn’t be better for this sort of thing, in a couple of different ways.
One is the attacks on DEI. This goes to inclusion. And inclusion is important for a variety of reasons, and diversity as well. But the other part of it too is because we’re just getting outnumbered and outflanked by many of our competitors overseas, China in particular but not only – not solely. And I think a lot of what’s going on the United States, in part, is you’ve got this sort of whipsaw activity going on. On the one hand I think the statistic I heard was about 38 percent of many of our scientists and engineers that are coming here to the United States are coming from China. Which is fine. The other problem with that, though, is we’ve got this other piece going on in the Congress, which you may have seen, which is a sort of a competition with the with the CCP that, I think, is spilling over into sort of anti-Chinese sentiment.
And so what might end up happening with that is we might end up pushing away people that we need to do the scientific, inventing and engineering work at a time when we need it most in our competitive activities in the United States. The other part of that too, though, is we have a lot of people in the United States that are not getting involved in these kinds of opportunities. They don’t, for a variety of reasons. You’ve got – a lot of it’s class, a lot of it’s race and economic, a lot of it’s gender-based. And that’s reflected in the report to some extent. But I think we have to try and find ways to make sure that we build those bridges and get them included, because we need the numbers, we need the talent, we need the talent pool. And it’s also going to be critical, I think, too, to the extent we are trying to have more of the United States activities focused on people in the United States, we got to grow them. We got to help them get to where they can actually participate in these kinds of activities.
And then the last piece of that is the anti-DEI activities that are going on right now in the United States too. And you’ve seen those. They grew out of the Harvard-UNC case that went back – I guess it’s almost a year ago now – back to last summer. The United the United States Supreme Court came down with an opinion that limited affirmative action with respect to college admissions. That’s sort of grown into other types of attacks on preferential treatment programs. But outside of the courts, you have this DEI attack that’s going on. And it’s – you know, not to get too partisan on it – but you have folks who are opposed to any kind of DEI activities, who start sending letters, threatening letters, essentially, to corporations across the country – law firms, businesses – saying: If you continue with these activities, we’re going to sue you.
And the idea was to try and undermine or eliminate those activities entirely. And it’s, frankly, had an impact. There are certainly companies that have stepped back away from their commitments that they made, especially in the wake of the George Floyd activities that took place, I guess that’s about four years ago. Now, a lot of companies came out and made commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And they started doing some work on it. COVID got in the way in part, but now this is becoming an issue with respect to that too. So I think we’ve got to figure out in this context what sorts of things we can do to really build up these sort of efforts. And the report touched on a variety of aspects of that.
And, yeah, you won’t be surprised, I guess, to hear that, you know, people seeking patents – women, minorities – aren’t as – you know, registering as highly as other people in different communities are. And the report was trying to figure out why. And it talked – and they’re going to present it, as I mentioned a minute ago, but I did want to talk about it from a personal perspective because, as you heard at my introduction, I was a private practitioner. I did not do patent law. My brother, as you pointed out, does patent litigation. I tried to stay as far away from it as I could, because it’s kind of complicated stuff. But I found myself being approached by people who were inventors, people who were trying to figure out how to navigate the system.
And they turned to me frequently because before I went into private practice, I was the state’s attorney, which is the local prosecutor. Now, as you know, local prosecutors don’t have any particular expertise with respect to patents. But I was the lawyer they knew. Other than the guys that run the TV ads, as it Morgan & Morgan and the like? Well, they knew not to call those guys, because nobody had been injured. But Ivey, you know, I remember him. He was – it was called state’s attorney, attorney’s in the name, maybe he can help us out. So I would get calls from people frequently that had issues like this, their patents, they had inventions that they were trying to roll out.
And I would try and chat with them and say, you know, look, I don’t have a background in this kind of thing. I can give you recommendations for people to do. I don’t want to talk to those guys. Well, why not? Well, one of them is – you know, they would say, well, I’d like you a lot. Or some of them would even say, you know, I prayed on it, and the Lord sent me to you. And what that meant was they wanted pro bono representation, actually. (Laughter.) But the bottom line was they just didn’t know a lot of lawyers, number one.
Number two, they didn’t know the system, how the patent process worked. They didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. They knew they were jumping into the shark tank, right? Because everybody’s heard these stories about – and I did lobby for Microsoft back in the day, so I know what they can do. Actually, maybe, I – is it still too soon? I can’t put those stories out, right? I don’t know. (Laughter.) Well, let’s say it this way. There’s a lot of competition in the patent world. There’s a lot of conflict in the patent world. There’s a lot of times where people get bought out in the patent world, which, for some is the goal. There are others where people will tell you their ideas were stolen.
And that’s the story that they’ve heard. They’ve heard that if you have a good idea and you don’t have the money to get it out and protect it, somebody’s going to take it from you. And they saw the movie with the – remember the delayed windshield wiper guy, and all of that stuff? This is in – this is their conventional wisdom. This is what they know is out there. So they know they need help. They know it’s a tough system. They know it can be risky and highly competitive, and potentially theft can take place while they’re out there. But they know they don’t have the money to pay for the type of legal representation that they’re probably going to need, even to get the – to secure the patent up front, and then to litigate it down the road. They know they don’t have that.
So there’s a lot of distrust. There’s a lot of concern. There’s a lot of mistrust, I guess I should say, with respect to how the patent system works, and how they can deal with it. So you listed out a series of factors that are – that are issues, I think. Knowledge and awareness, certainly, with respect to the – to how patents work. I know there’s a lot of people that know they need a patent, but they don’t necessarily know how to go about procuring one. How do you do the application? What do you need to protect it?
Second, networks and relationship building. A lot of these folks do not have the professional types of networks that many, you know, inventors – especially those that have come up in corporations – would necessarily have, or are more likely to have. And they don’t necessarily have the informal assistance that they can get. They can’t call up someone who’s maybe been through this before and say, hey, what’s this like, or, can you recommend somebody? What are the – you know, the pitfalls that I should try and avoid? Collaboration’s another aspect that goes to the same piece with respect to networking.
Transparency, especially with respect to how the process works, to the extent there are disputes. I’m on the House Judiciary Committee. And one of the things we hear a lot about is – from people who are litigating these patent issues, and they’re trying to find whether it’s in court or at the patent office. And there’s – I can go into that if you all want, but there’s enormous controversies about what the better way to go there is. But there’s sometimes uncertainty about how it works, and how it ought to work, and how long it’s going to take to work, and how expensive it’s going to be to get it to work.
And so, you know, there’s a lot of question marks that people face when they are looking into the system. And I think it can put them off. And then the values alignment, which was actually one I hadn’t really thought about and didn’t experience in the same way. But once I read it, and that goes to the issue of people who’ve – their commitment – their professional commitment is to try and do things to help a community, the community they came from, might to be help African Americans, or women, or low-income people, whatever it is.
But there’s a concern that if I get a patent, or – you know, and it’s you sort of takes on a life of its own, or someone buys the patent, or the like, it may not be used for what I wanted it to be used for. I guess this would be – you know, Oppenheimer would be the example on steroids. But that’s the kind of concern that they have, too. Is this really going to be a public social benefit in the way that I had hoped that it would be?
So I think that they’ve done a great job of identifying these kinds of issues. They’ll go through the methodology and the focus group piece. But I did want to say a couple of things about this, about things that I think we can try and do. And I’m assuming you’ll cover this on the panel as well. A, I think it’s great to have identified it. I think it makes sense to point this out and make sure that we’re trying to take steps to address it. But, B, it really goes to a bigger systemic issue with – it goes to our education system in some part. A lot of students are not getting the kind of STEM-related education that they need to have the chance to go into these kinds of fields.
And my district’s Prince George’s County. It’s the eastern border of Washington, D.C. We have a great STEM school there. It’s called Eleanor Roosevelt. We have a lot of schools that don’t have great STEM education tracks as well, high schools. And so to the extent that’s the issue – and it’s not just Prince George’s County, frankly, it’s across the country. My daughter married a man who was German. He came up in Germany. And they came back to United States, thank God, finally, and decided to buy a house here. After they had the grandkid, I was, like, I’m putting my foot down. Y’all got to come back. (Laughter.) Come back to the country.
But he was appalled at what he saw in the American public education system. He looked here and he said, this is ridiculous. This is – you guys are the leader of the free – you’re the – and I was like, yeah. And he said, well, your schools are not keeping up. And if you look at the rankings, I think we’re, like, I don’t know, like 35th or 36th or something among other Western democracies, as far as rankings from education. And those of you who are hiring people, you can see it too. And I’m not going to dwell on this Gen Z thing, because I think this is not – it’s not them. I mean, this has been a problem that’s been there for the United States for as long as I can remember. And I’m getting to that point now where I my memory goes back quite a ways.
So we know this is a problem. We know we need to work on it. And it’s going to become even more important as AI rolls out, because we don’t actually know at this point what AI is going to be, what it’s going to do, where it’s going to take us. But we know we better, like, educate ourselves to make sure we can keep up with it. Well, to the extent we can. We’ve got the Terminator crowd on my committee, who, you know, think the machines are going to take over. I don’t know that I’m that concerned about it in that way, but it’s clear that there’s a lot of folks who – there’s a huge potential that a lot of people will get left behind by AI.
They always tell us, no, it’s going to create new jobs. But it looks to me like the jobs that are going to disappear are going to be far outnumbering the jobs that will be created by AI. And we need to figure out how to – how to address that. And the other challenge with respect to that is, how do we prepare people for the jobs that will be created when the other jobs disappear? The example I’ll give you is when NAFTA was passed. And I was on the Hill when that happened, so I’m – yeah, I’m that old. Yeah. (Laughter.) That was in the ’90s. And the promise that we made – the Democrats, primarily, Clinton, and I was on the Senate side working for Senator Daschle at the time. And the promise we made was, yeah, these jobs are going to go overseas, but we’re going to – we’re going to retrain you, we’re going to put education programs in place. You get retooled. You’ll be able to go into new jobs.
And what we found was that that didn’t happen, especially for people who are, like, fifty or older. They didn’t get the new training. And if they did, they weren’t given the jobs because employers wanted to hire the young kid instead of the old guy, and pay less. It’s sort of like the football. You know, you get the rookie instead of the vet. And so we had this whole generation of people who started losing their jobs and having no place to go. AI could be something similar to that, but on a much more expansive basis than what we had with respect to the industrial transfer of those jobs to first Mexico and then China. So we really need to get on top of this, I think, in a very aggressive way, and I think try and manage what’s coming with it.
And I’m always reluctant to say AI because it’s such a broad umbrella and it covers so many things. But we know it’s going to have a huge impact. And to the extent we’re looking at people who have – they’re trying to invent new things, AI is going to be one of the tools that could be used to do that, or to test them, or the like. We were at a conference and they were talking about how – I forget what the particular test was – but under with current computers they said it would take 2,000 years to test out the theory that they had that they were trying to build something on. But with the AI computers, I think they’re called quantum computers, I believe, it took two weeks. Don’t laugh at me. Come on now. I’m trying hard. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
But the quantum computers could do it in two weeks, where the other computers needed 2,000 years. And so we know this can be helpful, but who’s running the quantum computers? Well, obviously it’s not me, because I’m struggling to remember what to call it. And there’s all of old dogs like me that are out there. So think about, you know, what that means, the comparison to the fifty-year-old we promised to retrain, and now we’ve got forty-year-old, thirty-year-old. You know, AI comes and wipes out what you were doing. Or, even more concerning I think, we’ve got kids going to school now – sorry, young adults. I apologize. That want to become X. And that field might not exist in four years.
One quick example on that front. In my district we have a company that builds ceramic batteries. They just – it’s a new thing. And I have a colleague who’s – they’re building out a development piece in his district for old school batteries, lithium batteries. He’s really excited about it, this is a multimillion dollar investment. The problem with lithium batteries is, A, they can catch on fire and blow up. And, B, they use these minerals that frequently are mined using slave labor from overseas. And ceramic batteries are cheaper. I think this technology eliminates that in very short order. As soon as we can build it out, I think those will be gone. So what does that mean for people in that industry? What does that mean for the U.S. investment, or the local investment, to build that out? You know, what happens to those workers who are structuring their lives around that?
And then one last point. This is a little off topic, but hopefully not too far, from the federal government perspective. I was just in Israel the other day. And we went to visit this company called Rafael. And Rafael’s the company that built the Iron Dome. And they started talking about the things that they’re doing for the next – this is Tony Stark times 10, you know, for those of you who know Iron Man. The stuff that they do is real. There’s laser technology and the like for missile defense systems.
And, you know, I started thinking about what that could mean from the standpoint of the international impact, but also, like, who’s developing this stuff? You know, who are the people – and I’m sure they’ve got their patent attorneys all over these to make sure that they’re protected. But who’s developing it? Who understands it? Who knows how to manage it? And to what extent will those of us who are looking to participate in this system – as either voters to support it, customers who are clients, potential employees – how do we make sure everybody gets integrated into all of these kinds of activities as we move forward? The chasm is great.
The chasm is great. I think the – especially based on income and race here in the United States. It looks to me like it’s becoming bigger and bigger instead of smaller and smaller. And I’m really worried that it will accelerate, based on what’s happening with respect to AI and other types of scientific developments and advances. And to the extent you have additional barriers to protect it – and patents are a good thing. I’m not criticizing them at all, because they help to spur innovation. But, you know, to the extent you’ve got this whole separate world with its own language, its own systems, its, you know, barriers to entry and the like that, I think, are pointed out in the report, and that cause people to be concerned, the lack of transparency. Folks worry that I don’t know if I can get into that shank tank and compete and survive. It could get worse than it is now.
So I’ll stop there. But I want to thank CSIS for giving me a chance to come speak about this. But especially to take – for taking a look at this, because I think this is one of those issues that might not always get the kind of spotlight that it deserves, but these are some of the big issues that United States and the world will be facing as we move forward. And thanks too for your report. I think it does an outstanding job of really putting its finger on the issue and helping us figure out what the challenges are, and hopefully develop some solutions to help us get through it. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. (Applause.)
Mr. Iancu: OK, great. Thank you, Congressman. Really insightful remarks, and we’re going to delve into them. No worries, we’re going to ask just a few questions about specific sections of the patent code and see how that goes. But before we do any of that, let me introduce this fantastic panel.
First of all, the authors of the report that the Congressman mentioned, beginning with Jessica Milli. She is a Ph.D. economist with over 10 years of experience directing high-impact research projects and evaluations with a focus on social and economic equity. She’s the founder of Research 2 Impact, and she utilizes a mixed method research approach that helps organizations, philanthropists, and policymakers leverage data and stories to drive social impact.
The co-author of the report, right next to me, is Breann Branch. She also is a – has a Ph.D. in educational leadership policy and foundations and social science from the University of Missouri. Although much more important than any of that, all her undergraduate degrees and so on, and her background is from Los Angeles and UCLA. And she has worked in higher education for several years. Came back to Southern California for a while. She served as the associate director of the Women in Engineering Department at the School of Engineering at UCLA.
Next to them is somebody for whom this – all this is done for, an inventor, Margo Bagley. Actually, Margo is currently a professor of law at Emory. She came to the Emory – she came to Emory University in 2016 after a decade at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was the Hardy Cross Dillard professor of law. She was also the Hieken visiting professor in patent law at Harvard. Also, for us in Los Angeles, known as the UCLA of the East. (Laughter.) Margo is very well known and a widely cited scholar on a variety of international IP topics and is one of the foremost experts on international patent law issues. Importantly, before all of that, she was a chemical engineer – research and development engineer at Procter & Gamble, and she has several patents. One of them at Procter & Gamble and two more recently with her husband. And they started a new company based on those.
Last but not least, Holly Fechner. She is the executive director of Invent Together, the organization that commissioned the report we’re talking about today. She’s also a partner at Covington & Burling. She’s the co-chair of Covington’s Technology Industry Group. And she has served as policy director for Senator Kennedy, and as an adjunct at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
OK, and you’ve heard the great introduction of Congressman Ivey.
So let’s start the conversation. Let me start with Holly, and ask you, your organization does a lot of work with respect to diversity of innovation. And you commissioned the report. Maybe you can tell us why you did that, and what caused you to commission the report.
Holly Fencher: Well, thanks so much, Andrei. And I really appreciate the opportunity that CSIS has given us to partner on this event together. I’m just thrilled to be here with the congressman, who was a colleague when we both worked in the Senate, and these wonderful experts on diversity and innovation. So Invent Together is an alliance of universities, companies, and nonprofits. And we’re committed to ensuring that everybody has the opportunity to invent and patent.
What we’ve done is we’ve got multiple prongs to what we do – public education, public policy – but research is foundational to what we do. So beginning in 2016, we commissioned our first report, because very little work has been done on the issue of inclusive innovation. So we did a series of reports with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. And what we were trying to do at the beginning was just document the challenge that we’re facing here. So out of the work that we did, and then subsequent work that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office did, we know the following things. We know that of inventors listed on U.S. patents, less than 13 percent are women. And of all patents, people of color are only 8 percent, even though they’re a much higher percentage of the population as a whole.
And this issue is really important in terms of socioeconomic mobility, where low-income people are not patenting at the rate that we would want them to, irrespective of education ability. And I think also astounding is the geographical issues that relate to this. So we know that people, inventors, from only 20 U.S. counties have half of the patents of the entire U.S. population. So you can see how concentrated our inventive capacity is in the United States on so many different dimensions. And so this is really what we’re trying to do at Invent Together, is break these down and try to ensure that we really unleash this incredible inventive opportunity that we have as a society and as a country.
So we did a number of different studies that I think really led us to the point where we asked Jessica and Breann to do this particular study. So we did work, like I said, just documenting the challenge. But also we’ve done some qualitative work, where researchers from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research did interviews – very focused interviews with inventors, particularly women, women of color, to try to understand more deeply what the challenges are, what are the barriers, and how we can overcome them. And one of the things that we realized from that study was that trust was an issue. And so we were thrilled to work with Jessica and Breann. And in a minute you’ll hear more about the specifics of their work.
Mr. Iancu: Great. Thanks, Holly. I do want to emphasize the dire numbers. And Congressman Ivey mentioned some of it in his opening remarks. The United States is definitely falling behind in many areas of technology. When I was the director, I used to say that we’re operating with a hand tied behind our backs. Now I think we’re operating with a hand and four fingers tied behind our backs. The reality is that women participate at a 12 or 13 percent rate. People of color, single digits. Eight percent is a number I’ve seen before. But innovation is not only demographically concentrated, it is also geographically and economically concentrated.
So it is constant. No matter what community you come from, you’re not inventing unless you’re in basically five communities, centered around the coasts in great degree. The rest of the – large swaths of the United States barely participate. And folks from economically underrepresented communities don’t participate almost at all. So demographically, geographically, economically, innovation in the United States is extremely concentrated. And large percentages of our country are left behind. And that’s detrimental to them, to their communities, to their companies, and obviously to the United States.
The most remarkable thing is that a lot of the companies actually have the employees on premises. And the study that we did at PTO show that almost across the board only about – that women participate only at about half the rate of their employment in STEM jobs. That means that they’ve already gotten the education, they’re in the seats, they have the qualifications, and still they’re not participating at the same rate – or, it’s no more than about half. One of the best companies for that actually is Procter & Gamble. It’s number one in our reports twice in a row, by a significant margin. But still, even there they’re not close to being on par.
And, Margot, you worked at Procter & Gamble. Maybe can tell us a little bit what sorts of best practices you saw there, and why, overall, in general, do you see this issue as important? And what can be done?
Margo Bagley: Sure. And I’m also delighted to be here and to be able to participate in this discussion. It’s a very important issue. The report is important because it’s adding to a growing body of literature about the causes of the lack of, or the under participation that we have, by women and underrepresented minorities in this area.
And it does matter. Representative Ivey mentioned China. It matters for global competitiveness. China for a long time has had an all-hands-on-deck approach to patenting, inventing, providing subsidies to people who file patent applications. You could get your prison term reduced if you came up with a great invention. And I’m not saying that we have to do that – (laughter) – but nevertheless, they dramatically increased the number of people who are participating in the invention process. And we have not been doing that. And we have, as has been said, so many people – one report says, “lost Einstein’s,” who would have and could have contributed really important inventions to the benefit of our society, to our competitiveness, but did not have the opportunity, did not have the knowledge.
It matters also because people often invent based on the problems that they have and the problems they see. So research shows that women inventors, women teams of inventors, are more likely to develop solutions to problems that affect women. Male teams are more likely – not that they only do – to develop solutions to problems that affect men. I’ve seen this on the continent of Africa, where inventors there were focused on problems that were related to their particular circumstances. So if we have an underrepresentation of inventors from different demographic groups, we’re going to have an underproduction of inventions to solve the problems that those particular communities face.
So that affects not only who’s participating in the invention process, but who gets to benefit from innovation. So it’s really important that we start to figure out this problem and change it, because it is something that can be changed. And I don’t want to preempt too much, but knowledge is so important. And that’s one of the things that Procter & Gamble is really good about. That’s where I learned about patenting. That’s where I saw my first patent, was as a summer intern at Procter & Gamble. And I was asked to actually analyze a patent. And as a summer intern, I came up with an invention to increase chocolate flavor in Devil’s Food cakes by 20 percent. (Laughter, cheers, applause.) It was great. It was a really great process.
And I was encouraged to file an invention disclosure, but I left, you know, after the summer, and it never got done, and nobody followed up with me. And that’s one of the ways that it can happen that things can slip through the cracks with inventors. So there are a lot of things that can be done. I think once we hear about the study, we can talk more about that.
Mr. Iancu: Great. Thanks, Margo. So now let’s turn to the study and turn the podium over to Jessica and Breann. Before I do that, let me correct myself. Breann is from Los Angeles, but she went to Howard, not to UCLA. She did, ultimately though, end up teaching at UCLA. And now she’s a DEI expert. (Laughter.) So with that, please tell us about the report.
Jessica Milli: Great. So can we get the slides brought up? Thank you. So thank you all for being here today. Thank you to CSIS for hosting us. We’re really excited to talk to you all today about our new report. So the motivation for this study, and Andrei kind of alluded to this in his remarks, was that even in academic and corporate settings where inventors usually have access to significant resources and supports to help them navigate the patenting process, women and people of color are still not participating in invention and patenting at rates that we would expect them to, given their representation in the relevant population.
So while supports and resources are important pieces of the puzzle to getting greater participation in patenting, there’s got to be other factors at play that might be preventing further participation. And so our hypothesis for the report was that trust, or a lack of trust, can influence many different factors throughout the decision process and application process for a patent. It can influence how you choose to consume information, who you go to for support, whether and how you engage with different resources to help you throughout the process, whether you decide to actually apply for a patent. And all of these things can ultimately affect your success in your patenting endeavors.
And so to answer this question, we utilized a mixed methods research approach, starting with a number of focus groups with a very diverse group of people representing all different levels of engagement in innovation and patenting – from people who had never heard of a patent before all the way to people who had filed multiple patent applications and so our findings from these focus groups really helped us understand some of the key issues and barriers that people from marginalized communities are facing and engaging in patenting. And they helped us develop a quantitative survey to get at this – all of these issues in greater detail with a wider audience.
And so what we found with respect to trust is that people are generally pretty trusting, particularly of people who are in a position to help them navigate the patenting process and offer them professional advice. But at the same time, they also exercise a certain amount of caution when they are considering who to go to for help and support. So, for example, about two-thirds of people who we surveyed said that they preferred to work through challenges that they’re facing at work or in their business on their own. And 73 percent felt that it’s best to keep their ideas very closely guarded to prevent others from stealing them, which goes back to some of the remarks that the congressman brought up in his opening statements.
And these findings are true across the board, across, you know, different demographic groups. But we did find that women and people of color tended to be a little less trusting and more cautious than people from other backgrounds. Black women in particular tended to be less trusting and more cautious. So with them, 97 percent felt that it was best to be cautious before trusting others for professional advice and 91 percent felt that they needed to keep their ideas closely guarded to prevent others from stealing them.
So what does this mean for patenting? Well, we found that people who were less trusting and more cautious were, on average, about 18 percent less likely to even consider pursuing a patent if they had an idea for a new product or a technology. But on the other hand, if they did have people in their networks that they could trust to help them develop their ideas and help them navigate the process, they were 72 percent more likely to feel confident in knowing where to start and who to talk to. They were 65 percent more confident in understanding what is required to file a patent application. They were 70 percent more likely to feel confident in being able to finance the cost of a patent. And they were 57 percent more likely to feel confident in finding someone in their network to help them navigate the process.
So our research found that there are really five key avenues for building trust in the patent system and in the key individuals and institutions that inventors need to go to for support to help them navigate that process. They are knowledge and awareness, networks and relationship building, collaboration, transparency, and values alignment. And my colleague and coauthor, Breann, is going to talk to you guys in a little bit more detail about some of the challenges and limitations that we identified through our research within the ecosystem along all of these different avenues, and what some of the opportunities are for developing policies and practices to help build trust and advance greater participation in the patenting ecosystem.
Breann Branch: Great. Hello, everyone. I’m super excited to be here, to be on this esteemed panel. So thank you.
Like Jessica said, this report is about trust. And so I will be going over five key things that we found. I want to just go into detail. And I wanted to just put the whole slide up there, because – yeah. So most people found minimal or no knowledge of patents, and most were unaware of the different services available to inventors in general. This resulted in lower trust in the patent system itself, and key resources and service providers. So, for example, with the minimum or no knowledge, 27 percent were less likely to trust the USPTO, 24 percent less likely to trust patent examiners, and then 25 percent less likely to trust their TTOs. So participants also noted that diversity and representation in patent education matters, particularly to women and people of color. Study participants were more trusting of information that was presented by someone who looked like them and provided diverse examples that allowed them to see themselves as a potential inventor.
Next is negative workplace erodes trust. So for this key finding, women and people of color were more likely to have frequent negative experiences in the workplace, such as being ignored and talked over in meetings, having ideas taken by other coworkers, just general lack of respect from their colleagues. They could be patent attorneys, teammates, other colleagues across the department. And then just idea rejection from PIs and supervisors overall. These experiences took their toll and negatively affect behaviors and attitudes important to successfully navigate the patenting system. There we go. So that resulted in decreased willingness to share thoughts and ideas with managers and coworkers, decreased willingness to share questions or to seek help when needed, and just overall diminished trust in coworkers and managers.
Our next key finding was transparency. And we hit on this a little bit already, but I did want to point out that in our study many participants shared that their institution does not have clear policies and procedures in place to document how inventions should be disclosed and how they will be evaluated. This made them believe that they were not being evaluated fairly, therefore diminishing trust in their institution. This was really interesting. In a write-in on the survey, we asked respondents what institutions could do to build trust with them. Even though they could write about anything they wanted, nearly 10 percent emphasized the need for greater transparency in the organization.
In our final values alignment – final key factor is values alignment. So women and people of color are more motivated to invent to solve societal problems, inventing for their communities, like Congressman Glenn has already said. They will less likely consider pursuing a patent for the inventions if they felt that their patent was at odds with their own goals and motivation for inventing in the first place. This was particularly challenging for women and people of color in academic and corporate settings, where inventors must disclose their inventions to their institutions and assign rights to them.
So for our focus group inventors, they struggle with this because there was a worry about how the invention would be once they lost control of it. Survey respondents, 35 percent of Hispanic women and 29 percent of Black women said that concerns about their invention not benefiting the populations they wanted to help may prevent them from inventing altogether. So those were the key findings. We talked about a lot of the issues – (laughs) – with trust. But we did come up with some recommendations in our study that I will just take a moment to highlight and we’ll continue to discuss today.
Our findings informed the development of a number of recommendations, broadly in recommendations that fell into three categories. So that’s public policy, workplace culture, and education. So public policy, we found that inventors had mixed experiences with working with different resources and service providers. Those that had negative work – or, negative experiences overall often sought help from service providers who weren’t adequately equipped to help them. And so that diminished their trust. And that led us to our public policy recommendations, which are to better equip and support individuals with resources and focus on effective ways to engage with marginalized communities.
For workplace culture, institutions must invest in strategies to promote inclusive and collaborative work environments in order to foster trust and to do – to lessen negative work environments, which is a major issue here. They also needed to develop clear and consistent procedures for invention and disclosure and evaluating them. And our final recommendation, education. This was, like, a really big recommendation, which basically participants in the focus group highlight the importance of education in building trust in the patent system. We must develop and implement education curriculum that can be delivered at every level of our education system, and ensure that everyone has access to this knowledge, further emphasizing diversity and partnering with trusted community leaders to deliver education to help foster trust within marginalized communities.
So that’s a high-level of the report. And we can take questions. And I’ll hand the conversation back over to Andrei. Thank you.
Mr. Iancu: Great. Really amazing. Thank you so much for the presentation. You know, I wouldn’t mind if you left the last slide up.
Dr. Branch: Sure.
Mr. Iancu: I got to tell you, as I was listening to you I had two conflicting thoughts at the same time – actually multiple thoughts. But one is, like, so depressing. (Laughter.) Like 83 percent of would-be inventors do not know almost anything about patents or the patent system? It’s shocking. And it’s not surprising. You know, I went to engineering school. And, Margot, so did you. You have to take – you mandatorily have to take math, and statistics, and physics, and chemistry, and stuff that I’ve never, ever once, like, you know, multiple, you know, calculus, I can’t even pronounce the stuff I learned. (Laughter.) Completely useless, OK? (Laughter.) Not a single class mentioned patents at all. No requirement. Not even offered.
Of course, that was a long time ago. I don’t think it’s much different now. So that’s on the education front. But at the same time I feel very hopeful, because there’s a tremendous opportunity here. So with that, from the hopeful point of view, I want to go to the congressman, and just ask you, first of all, what you thought about the report now, that you’ve seen them presented, but also from a public policy perspective, you know, as a member of Congress, what could be done here? Because there’s tremendous potential for doing good here.
Rep. Ivey: Yeah. I think – is that on? I think that one of the ways we can try and approach it is to try and get guidance from those who’ve been into it. How could we help you get there? I mean, the 83 percent number is pretty striking. And I know we had patent law in law school. I didn’t take it. (Laughter.) But, yeah, it might be – I’m not sure I’m aware of any other place where it might be available. I mean, does the patent office offer courses like that?
Mr. Iancu: Sure, the Patent Office offers lots of education. And we have one – at least one of the members here today. And it’s on the website, at USPTO.gov. But the reality is I don’t think it’s reaching those who need it and when they need it. You know, you have to have a level of education to even know that there is a website that the PTO should look at. And I was an engineer. I didn’t know.
Rep. Ivey: I mean, we do have a series of small business entities and service facilities, SBA and others, that are across the country. They’re aimed more at, you know, the managerial and administrative parts of opening and running a business. But, you know, I don’t know if these sorts of trainings are available there. But certainly, that would be a place where people who are in business or interested in getting in business and need to try and get these skills might turn to try and find them.
And, you know, just trying to think out loud, it probably would make sense to have some sort of – well, I’ll say it this way. It was funny to hear you talk about physics and never having used it, because usually us philosophy majors are the ones that say that kind of thing. (Laughter.) But it is kind of – you know, there’s a lot of practical training in education that we don’t provide in the United States – civics, personal financial planning is another one. You know, my kids – I have six kids. I know, gasp. (Laughter.) They’re sort of mid-thirties to early 24, another Howard grad. (Laughter.) But they have no background – or they’re given no guidance about personal financial stuff. They just kind of chat with me and, you know, oh, you’re not in the – you should do that.
So this would be another area where we shouldn’t just leave it to the families or passing it down informally. This should be available. And I would think that maybe even the high school level, you can try and find ways. Because it’s – letting people know, just as part of the civics process, that patents might be of interest. If you do invent something, this is – you know, you can – this is something you should know about. I don’t even know if we really broach it in that way. It’s just straight biology, you know. And I think that’s a mistake on our part.
Mr. Iancu: Yeah. There’s lots of failure and gaps there. The reality is, my view is, it needs to start in kindergarten. Because we lose a lot of these kids by middle school, when basically, in quotes here, math and science is no longer “cool,” much less, you know, concepts of intellectual property law. And, you know, it’s not just patents. It’s also copyrights, the protections for songs that they listen to and the movies they watch.
But I really think that the United States needs an organized system. And, you know, frankly, I do think Congress could commission the USPTO, for example, or some government agency, to create a systematic set of recommendations that can be implemented. And, you know, it comes to education, both STEM and the legal concepts that we’re talking about here, at every single level – kindergarten to college and beyond. Second, employment. Just getting the folks hired in the first place. But even – as our reports show, even once hired, making sure that they have equal access to the opportunities.
And then, third, the procurement and enforcement process when it comes to both intellectual property rights of any kind, including patents but others too, as well as access to capital. You know, at every level we need to do so much more. And there’s no plan for this country. There is – there’s no nobody talking in a – in a comprehensive, cohesive way. And I’m afraid that without an official push from Congress, or from the White House, for example, or something like that, it’s not going to happen.
Ms. Fencher: Andrei, if I could take that on. I wholly agree with you, it really seems like it’s time for the United States to have an innovation council, or some kind of entity that really takes on these issues as a whole. But focusing specifically on education, we like to think of it in three buckets. There’s invention education, there’s STEM education, and then there’s patent education. Now I think most people in this country, at least people focused on education issues, understand what STEM education is. And there’s a lot of focus in the Congress about ensuring that we provide and fund STEM education.
But almost nobody is talking about invention education and patent education, except the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. So invention education can absolutely, and should absolutely, be started at the youngest ages, because this is just helping kids think with an inventive mindset. How can you solve the problem, right? I mean, this is really the foundation of inventing and patenting is being curious and, you know, being open to solving problems. So that’s something that I think would really be exciting to have as part of the curriculum for our younger ages.
And then patent education, I do have to say that I don’t think the high schools and the universities are doing a good job at all on this. You know, right now it’s basically up to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. And I think they’re really taking to heart one of the lessons from this trust study, which is to make sure that the people who are offering that education are people that the communities relate to and feel like they’re somebody that they can trust. So, you know, I see a progression of what’s happening at the USPTO.
Just from the perspective of Invent Together, we saw this as a gap too. So we did both design and now we offer a free line patent education course called The Inventors Patent Academy. And, you know, what we felt was missing from the opportunities that were out there for patent education was a course that was designed specifically for women and people of color and people from historically underrepresented groups. So we did work with experts in the field to make sure that the course did that. And we’ve got, you know, a series of interviews throughout this online education course from inventors speaking from their own personal experience. But I agree, a lot more needs to be done, and can be done.
Mr. Iancu: Yeah, so, Margot, you’re the educator on the – on the panel here. What can law schools do, really? Not most – first of all, probably most law schools don’t even have a patent law class or an IP class. I don’t know. But even the ones that do, what more can they do to help their students, as well as the undergrads?
Ms. Bagley: Sure. So, as Holly mentioned, patent education is a part of it. And the USPTO is doing quite a bit. One of the things are clinics. And in fact, at Emory we’re just launching our new USPTO-certified patent clinic to provide pro bono services to inventors, because resources are a real barrier. That is a problem. If you’re not in a corporation – it was no problem when I was a Procter & Gamble. Of course, I wasn’t going to get the same benefit, but nevertheless I didn’t have to worry about patent fees. When my husband and I – we had to look seriously at the cost of obtaining patent protection in the U.S. and in other countries, and what do we do if we have to enforce it. So those are real, real challenges.
I wanted to say something, though, about education. And in Georgia we have the Georgia IP Alliance, the U.S. IP Alliance, Global IP Alliance, brainchild of Scott Frank who’s really a visionary on this, that is really working on K-12 education about patents and IP. But there’s literature that shows that you need more than just the knowledge, because in many companies women have knowledge, but they don’t necessarily see themselves as inventors. And one of the things that was shown is that particularly girls need to see female inventors. And that that has more of an impact on them becoming inventors themselves than seeing male inventors, because of the ability to connect and see themselves as an inventor.
There’s a lot of really great work that’s being done piloting different programs. And Meta, for example, Kevin Ahlstrom noticed they have an invention portal that inventors are supposed to submit to. He’s like, you know, it was mostly men that were submitting. Only 10 percent of women were filing. And yet, they’re 30 percent of the engineers. And so they switched from an opt in, where you have to have the initiative to file, to an opt out. If you’re hiring people to invent, assume that they’re going to invent and go around and talk to them and see, well, what exactly, you know, have you invented and come up with?
They also came up with these ideation groups, getting people together, identifying problems that the company had, and having them work in groups coming up with ideas. But the individuals were actually writing down ideas, and then patent attorneys would evaluate it. And they got so many ideas. And women who had specifically said, well, you know, inventors are – that’s above my pay grade. They talked about one in particular who, after going through that, she’s, like, you know, I can see myself as an inventor. She’s submitted 16 invention disclosures. She’s named on six patent applications. So there needs to be, in many cases, a shift in mindset. The ability to see yourself as an inventor.
You talked about the geographical concentration. Many children of inventors become inventors, and invent in the same areas as their parents. So this, you know, makes it – my father was a Ph.D. chemist and college professor. And he – I remember as a child him telling me – and I used to go to his lab and see his chemistry lab and the things he was working on – and telling me when he worked for the Metric Chemical Company he came up with a compound that, I don’t know what it did, but they called it emercite. His name was Emerson. They named it after him. They didn’t get a patent. (Laughter.)
But, you know, that helped me to see, yeah, OK, that’s great. You know, I can come up with new things. And I went to school and became a chemical engineer. So if we increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities who are inventing and becoming inventors, it’ll have ripple effects, generational effects, geographical effects. It’s really important that we identify what the challenges are and work on them.
Mr. Iancu: OK, one more question and then I think we have time for some audience questions. But for you, Breann and Jessica, to me it seems like the lowest hanging fruit would be the middle one, the workplace culture. It seems like the companies have an interest to get as many of its employees that are already in the seats to invent. And yet, we found when we did the progress and potential reports at the USPTO that that is not happening. It’s certainly not happening at scale. What’s the barrier there? What more can be done to get the companies themselves to get going?
Dr. Branch: Yeah. It’s really interesting that, as a – I’m a qualitative researcher by trade, so doing the focus groups and writing the analysis and seeing the workplace culture jumped out immediately. It was just, like, oh yeah, our company doesn’t do this. They expect us – academics, they’re saying they expect us to teach these courses and research is also really important, but the patenting is not tied to, like, our tenure. And so why would I take my time and energy to patent if I need to teach these classes, serve on committees, and do all these other things. And similar things were found in workplace settings and also in private sectors.
As a DEI practitioner, I always tell my leadership teams I work with that I consult, and even my students that I teach equity and inclusion to, you need to tie whatever that goal is to the organizational goal. So for this, we have a recommendation that says, tying invention and patenting into the organizational goal or value or principle automatically includes that workplace culture that generates positivity around inventing. And when you put budget behind it – just like with diversity work, when you put budget behind these offices that you create, then that adds the true value. So that’s just one low hanging fruit.
And also, having more a team collaboration, having people to come in cross departmentally, that was something we found is that people in corporate settings had more positive experiences when they would work with people outside their department, and they would partner together. And I just found that really interesting. And so allowing for a more inclusive workplace culture and putting invention at the center of their values and what they – what they say they want to do, much like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Dr. Milli: And I would add to that too, kind of riffing off something that Margo said, this came out primarily in our focus group conversations, talking with academic women inventors. But, you know, it’s really important that you have someone at your organization who is trying to bring you in and make you see yourself as an inventor, reaching out to you, seeing what you’re working on and how that might be potentially patentable. Because, you know, there’s research out there that says women wait to be invited, right?
And so for the women that we talked to, they had an amazing tech transfer office, who, as soon as they got to campus when they were hired, was reaching out to them and saying, hey, let’s set up a meeting. We want to talk to you about who we are, what we do, what we help scientists with. And we just want to, you know, learn about your work and what you’re working on, and how we can, you know, help you with that. And they would periodically reach out to them, you know, every couple of months to check in and see how things were going, check on the research that they talked about, and whether it might be time for them to start thinking about, you know, filing an invention disclosure and an application. So those sorts of practices can be really beneficial in getting more people engaged, particularly from marginalized backgrounds like women and people of color.
Mr. Iancu: Great. Any questions from the audience?
Rep. Ivey: I got to run. I got a 5:30.
Mr. Iancu: OK. (Laughter.)
Rep. Ivey: But I did want to thank you for giving me a chance to speak to the audience and to sit on the panel. And I hope we can follow up on this. This has been a great learning experience for me. I appreciated the chance to read the report. I think I heard a mission call for Congress – (laughter)
Mr. Iancu: At least one.
Rep. Ivey: – and I look forward to taking you up on it.
Ms. Fencher: Excellent. Thank you.
Mr. Iancu: Thank you, Congressman. Thank you so much. (Applause.)
Mr. Kersten: Five minutes.
Mr. Iancu: Five minutes. Yes, Elizabeth. I was going to call on you anyway. (Laughter.)
Q: I figured I’d beat you to the punch. Well, first and foremost, I want to thank all of you for sharing your insights, for doing – thank you – not sure it’s on. Oh, perfect. One more time. First and foremost, thank you for this research. It adds to the compilation of information, education, and, most importantly, awareness. Because I think awareness, we might all agree, is the first step in solving the problem, or at least working towards solving the problem, identifying what the parameters of the issues are.
I agree with everything that’s been said here today, and I know speaking on behalf of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office we are trying our darndest in avenues across the nation, pilot programs, initiatives to make a difference, to have an impact, and to change these demographics that we’ve spoken about today. I’d be excited to know more about the conversation on values alignment, because I see that one, at least in my mind, being very challenging, because people’s values are their values. And they’ve been created over potentially a lifetime. It comes from how they grew up, the world they’ve lived in, the parents they had, or what they haven’t had. How do we work with that, and how the intellectual property system is available to them? How can we navigate that conversation in a way to make positive change?
Dr. Milli: So I can start with that, and let others jump in. A couple of thoughts come to mind. First is with respect to some of the conversation that we’ve had on invention and patent education. So integrating some of that into that educational piece I think would be really beneficial. I think a lot of the people that we spoke with in the focus groups and heard from in the surveys have this very narrow idea of what patents are and the types of people who would pursue patents.
And I think there’s this idea that, you know, you’re only patenting to, you know, make money and, you know, prevent competition, and all of these things. But there’s so many other benefits to patents beyond that. And it’s a way for people who have a more social, you know, motivation for their work to get their ideas out there and share them with the world, and make sure that those communities can benefit them – from them. And so integrating that sort of information into our, you know, education on patents, I think would be helpful.
And I think Breann had talked a little bit about this in her remarks, you know, but corporations and universities can do a little bit more to connect patenting with their mission and corporate values to make sure that there’s an understanding from their employees on, you know, the idea that the work that they’re doing is going to be making a difference. It’s not just going to their company’s bottom line or their university’s bottom line. So they can understand what that larger impact is going to be.
Dr. Branch: Yeah. I would add on to that, as far as just even providing the question for someone to write, why? What does this mean to them? And when it gets to the technical piece of working with patent examiners and the actual application process, making it a part of a collaborative culture where you’re understanding that, OK, you know, someone who answers for a societal purpose gets a certain point, or a certain point where it comes up higher as far as getting approved. So it’s really about weaving into the structures, adding into the education piece, adding into the values piece, but finding those technical ways while we’re asking.
OK, if I’m a woman of color and I want to – and I want to talk about working on a system where my phone can recognize me and I don’t have to be in light, but when I’m in light my phone only recognizes me to unlock my password. Well, I want to be able to work on a patent that will help me to – that, I guess, would create to have darker skin to work on the phone like everybody else. Like, that has meaning. And that’s, I’m sure, it’s probably being worked on now, but that has meaning. And so something having that into an application where the processors and the people who are approving these understand why that matters, I think that will add into the layers of this conversation. You’ll see more diverse patents and different diverse technologies even be brought to the table.
Mr. Iancu: OK, one more question. I think Sujai had his hand up.
Q: Thank you so much for this really excellent panel.
When you talk about trust – thank you – normally you’d think about problems of information and then problems of motivation. And in terms of information, I think you’ve covered in terms of how do you get people educated and so forth. But in terms of motivation, I think exhortation is one part of it. But if you talk about workforce culture, to what extent do firms include patenting, for example, in their criteria for promotions and other types of workforce advancement?
Dr. Branch: You want to add onto that?
Dr. Milli: I don’t know that I’ve seen a whole lot of research out there that looks at the extent to which patents are included in promotion, you know, decisions. I know that there are a number of universities, in particular, that don’t take patents into account when they’re reviewing faculty tenure cases. But from the corporate perspective, I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of research out there in that regard. Holly, if you want to talk, I think there was some information in one of the previous IWPR reports that looked a little bit at that.
Ms. Fencher: Yeah. I too am not aware of research that will, you know, give us some overall statistics. But we do work very closely with companies on their best practices. And we see companies diverging in terms of how well they deal with these issues and whether they’re making progress. And one of the things that we’ve seen is that companies that have various different ways of celebrating their inventors and the patents that they get I think are making more progress.
And let me just give you a few examples of things that we see companies doing. Some do give bonuses, you know, compensation based on patenting. Others have different ways of celebrating. For example, I’m familiar with a company where on their business cards they put, you know, whether somebody is a patent holder. And they have regular celebrations about people getting patents. So I think there’s more to be done here in terms of using this as one of the internal tools that companies can use to improve.
And it really goes back to what Breann was saying, because you’re trying to align what you, you know, are hoping to incentivize people to do, with how you can talk about and value inventing and patenting. And I think what we see now is we see a lot of companies where they maybe have their DEI effort, and then they’ve got their whole invention patenting effort. And, like, the two never actually meet. And so I think that’s what successful companies are doing.
And, you know, a number of places have developed a tool kit to help companies really analyze their internal systems to bringing up these ideas and moving them toward actual patent applications and patents. And this is definitely a key part of it, is trying to align how you’re thinking about your workplace culture, specifically as it relates to inventing and patenting.
Mr. Iancu: Yeah. I also don’t know any specific studies, and I think maybe that’s the next study you guys will work on. (Laughter.) But, anecdotally, very few companies, Sujai, do that. Very few universities count patents as publications or anything else in evaluating tenure for professors. This is a bigger systemic issue at the C-suite level. So at the very first – as a first threshold issue, the C-suite needs to be educated as to the importance of these issues before they can start delegating down and recognizing their employees for the importance of these – of these achievements.
And I do want to emphasize that it’s not just patents as a number for the heck of having patents or having a higher count. You know, patents are just – you know, it’s one way – one representation of the innovative, creative output of an individual or of a company. And, you know, it’s one of the best measures for that. There could be other things. There are other forms of intellectual property as well. But it really needs to begin with a recognition by the executives that innovation from everybody on their staff is conducive to the employee development, to the company’s growth, and then ultimately to the community and the – and the United States.
OK, with that I think we’ve run out of time. Thank you very much to the – to the panel. Thank you to Invent Together for commissioning the report. Jessica and Breann for putting the report together. Margot for your continued work on innovation and education in this space. And thank you for – to CSIS for giving us the opportunity to have this conversation. Thank you all. (Applause.)
(END.)