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.