Increasing Diversity in the Patent Profession ... and beyond

Last Wednesday, May 18th, we held a ceremony for the first graduating class of the Patent Pipeline Program (PPP) – Priya Jagadish, Jaymn Singh, and Samad Emory at IP Counsel Cafe’s Annual Meeting.

Only 22% of practitioners in the patent profession are women, 6.5% are racially diverse, and only 1.7% are racially diverse women. We launched the PPP last year to address systemic inequality and increase access to the patent profession for women and people of color. This was the culmination of hard work and perseverance by several members of Meta’s IP Legal Team – Micheal Binns, Braxton Davis, Amanda Do Couto, Phil Huang and Tolani Akinkuotu.

Meta partnered with a non-profit organization called the National Council for Patent Practicum (NCPP), which provides free training to women and minorities on how to draft and prosecute patent applications before the U.S. Patent Office. Through the PPP, Meta connected NCPP’s graduating students with two of its partner law firms (Fisher Broyles and Baker Hostetler) and now Priya, Jaymn and Samad are full-time patent practitioners at these firms!

NEXT STEPS & REQUEST FOR HELP

We want to continue to highlight the PPP and share its mission, strategies, and stories from participants to illustrate how Meta is helping underrepresented communities get into the patent profession. There has also been a growing interest in expanding to other areas of law, so we launched a similar program to increase access to the trademark profession as well, the Trademark Pipeline Program, and together with the PPP, the Intellectual Property Pipeline Program. To date, we have received more than 120 applications for the second cohort of the now rebranded Intellectual Property Pipeline Program, so we need more companies and law firms to participate and invest in these talented students. It's important to note that this is not something that only Meta can do. Any company can partner with NCPP and create its own pipeline of talented candidates.

Please spread the word to your friends and colleagues at law firms and corporations to get involved at theNCPP.org, and direct any eligible candidates to the NCPP’s 2022 Interest Form.

All of these programs will help us drive awareness around a broader conversation about the lack of diversity in the practice of intellectual property. Together, we can address systemic inequality and change the profession forever.