The National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation: A Framework for IP Social Justice

On May 1, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced the adoption of the National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation (NSII). The NSII was developed by the USPTO with support from the Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI2), and “is based on a vision for United States leadership in innovation that will lift communities, grow the economy, create quality jobs, and address global challenges.” The USPTO intends to accomplish the vision set forth in the NSII by increasing participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and innovation, both generally and through related entrepreneurship, and thereby “unleash every American’s ability to fully take part in the innovation economy.”

The NSII embodies a bold initiative through which to pursue the mandate of the Unleashing American Innovators Act, signed into law by President Biden on December 29, 2022, and to achieve the social justice obligations and effects integral to an effective intellectual property ecosystem. While promoting IP endeavor has been at the forefront of American advances in science and technology since our nation’s inception, as noted in the NSII, leading research reveals that participation in the American innovation ecosystem is “exceptionally unequal”. A recent report by the USPTO indicates that only 12.8% of all inventors named on U.S. patents are women, while a Harvard study revealed that White Americans are three times more likely to become inventors than Black Americans, and that the children of the top 1% of income earners are 10 times more likely to become inventors than children with family incomes below the median.

The NSII represents a targeted, comprehensive strategy for ensuring that all Americans enjoy meaningful opportunities for access to, inclusion in, and empowerment through the IP and innovation ecosystem. The NSII is structured around four “cornerstone” goals, each addressing “a critical inflection point in the lives of potential innovators”: (i) Inspiring New Generations of Innovators; (ii) Educating and Empowering Innovators; (iii) Advancing Inclusive Innovation; and (iv) Bringing Innovation to Market. Based upon these cornerstone goals, the NSII includes a range of specific policy recommendations, from enhancing efforts to standardize and scale youth innovation education to expanding initiatives through which to leverage and increase commercialization support and tech transfer to benefit all American communities.

Through the NSII, the USPTO takes a leadership role in meeting the great challenge of confronting the demographic, economic, and geographic under-representation of citizens in the innovation economy. Every American must enjoy the opportunity and the privilege to contribute to the innovation storehouse, and to achieve this the NSII seeks to address every underserved cohort, including rural regions, veterans, elder communities, persons with disabilities, those who have educated themselves in non-elite or non-traditional settings, including trade schools, community colleges, or work experiences, as well as those who are under-resourced. To cultivate our nation’s full potential, “the United States must make sustained investments in its most important asset—the American people—by ensuring that every individual—irrespective…of ethnicity, gender, disability, or location—has access to the resources and opportunities to innovate.”

IIPSJ commends the National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation and its social justice-oriented perspective towards the American innovation ecosystem. We hope you will review the full report at https://www.uspto.gov/initiatives/equity/national-strategy-inclusive-innovation.

Press Release: Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice Expands Board, Goals

The Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, a twenty-one year old organization founded by Howard University law professor, Lateef Mtima, has expanded its board to include twelve thought leaders in IP legal practice and policy. The expansion will facilitate IIPSJ’s ability to focus nationally on its goal of promoting social justice through the most valuable property currently in existence: intellectual property.

“IIPSJ has been able to accomplish quite a bit from a modest beginning,” said Mtima. “It has helped to foster a more socially responsible and inclusive conversation about the role of IP protection in our society. Through the capabilities and insights of this very distinguished board IIPSJ will be able to build significantly upon these accomplishments.”

The expanded board will be chaired by Idris Mckelvey, Lead Patent Counsel at the Estée Lauder Companies Inc, and an alumnus of Howard University School of Law (2005). Its new members include:

Jeremiah Chan, Esq., Associate General Counsel – Meta Platforms
Joseph Drayton, Esq., Partner – Proskauer Rose LLP
Izu Emeagwalli, Esq., Executive Director and Assistant General Counsel – J.P. Morgan
Oliver St. Clair Franklin CBE, Honorary British Consul for Greater Philadelphia
Jonathan Goins, Esq., Principal – Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP
Philip Hampton, Esq., Partner – Polsinelli P.C.
Suzanne Harrison, Principal – Percipience LLC
Tom Irving, Esq., Partner – The Marbury Law Group, PLLC
Esther Lim, Esq., Partner – Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP
Lita Rosario-Richardson, Esq., Shareholder, Chair Entertainment Law Group – Shulman Rogers, P.A.
Tony Sebro, Esq., General Counsel – Change.org
Karyn Temple, Esq., Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel – Motion Picture Association

“We are looking forward to our first expanded board meeting on April 4,” said Mckelvey. “The recruitment process generated a lot of enthusiasm for using this tool, intellectual property, which is not often associated with social justice, to create a more just and prosperous society.”

2023 End of Year Recap

As we close another successful year, we want to highlight some of the impact of your contributions for 2023:

The Nexus of Social Justice and Intellectual Property

• Our monthly newsletters (https://iipsj.org/latest-news/) provided readers with timely and relevant recent developments in intellectual property law that have particular impacts on diverse communities and the concept of social justice, including:
  • The Supreme Court Decision in Gonzalez v. Google (https://iipsj.org/gonzalez-v-google/), which IIPSJ Founder and Director Lateef Mtima noted “implicitly acknowledges the complexity of the issues and interests impacted by Section 230, including the need to preserve venues through which marginalized and vulnerable voices and perspectives can be heard.”
  • The Supreme Court Decision in Warhol v. Goldsmith (https://iipsj.org/warhol-v-goldsmith/), which IIPSJ Founder and Director Lateef Mtima noted “ensures the vitality of the Fair Use doctrine while protecting artists, particularly marginalized and developing artists, from the distortion of the doctrine into a tool for the misappropriation of one artist’s work by another artist with greater fame and public recognition.”
  • Public Knowledge’s paper entitled Streaming in the Dark: Where Music Listeners’ Money Goes – and Doesn’t, which explained how billions in music subscription revenues “trickle up” into the pockets of “Rightsholding Middlemen,” leaving comparatively little for the artists themselves (https://publicknowledge.org/policy/streaming-in-the-dark-where-music-listeners-money-goes-and-doesnt/).
• Working with our various academic partners, IIPSJ organized the ninth annual IP MOSAIC Conference, where we created a space for IP scholars, political activists, practicing attorneys, community organizers, and policy makers to discuss papers and collaborate on various topics of IP empowerment. (https://iipsj.org/programs/ip-mosaic/) The theme was IP Rights and Wrongs: Advancing Social Justice and Ethics.

Diversifying the Legal Field and the Intellectual Property Bar

• For two decades, the IIPSJ IP and Social Justice CLE program (https://iipsj.org/2023-ip-social-justice-cle-recap/) has provided a venue through which to showcase minority and women IP attorneys. The 20th Annual IP & Social Justice CLE program (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpjeDSnL4i4lEMJf0N-48iqiZYF-CBvSb) explored the latest developments in IP law, including the relevant social justice impacts, strategies, and opportunities for enhancing the social efficacy of the IP legal regime.
• Working with our various academic partners and event sponsors, IIPSJ worked with Charlie Bingham to organize the 5th Annual HBCU IP & Tech Law Summit (https://iipsj.org/programs/hbcu-ip-tech-law-summit/), where the audience was treated to leading technology lawyers discussing Artificial Intelligence, Data Security and Privacy, Tech in Sports & Entertainment, Blockchain, Cybersecurity and more. 
• In August, IIPSJ participated in the United States Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA) Increasing Diversity in Innovation (IDII) (https://increasingdii.org/) 2nd Annual Conference, where companies, law firms, universities, the USPTO and the U.S.  Department of Commerce in the came together to discuss increasing diversity in the U.S. innovation ecosystem, and how they are working to transform it. IIPSJ Founder and Director Lateef Mtima shared his insight by speaking in the “What Can Universities Do?” panel. 
• With the goal of highlighting minority IP attorneys to serve as role models to encourage the pursuit of careers in IP practice, IIPSJ continued our Attorneys of Color in IP interview series (https://iipsj.org/blog-post-ip-attorney-interviews/), which featured interviews with Professor Daryl Lim, and trademark and fashion attorney Mariessa Terrell. 

Advocacy for Participation in the Intellectual Property System

• IIPSJ Founder and Director Lateef Mtima co-authored and submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States regarding Gonzalez v. Google (https://iipsj.org/amicus-brief-gonzalez-v-google/), which cited the IIPSJ publication Diversity and Inclusiveness in the Online Creator Economy. 
• In April, IIPSJ attended (https://mailchi.mp/iipsj/wrke-fellowship-update-ip-sj-article-events-of-interest?e=6f3c6b845f) Race + IP ’23 (https://raceipconference.org/2023/), where audiences had the opportunity to hear from a number of illustrious Critical Race IP scholars, including IIPSJ Founder and Director Lateef Mtima, who talked about a forthcoming book (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-intellectual-property-and-social-justice/981BDAF47503507CCB43ED96FDFADF1A) on IP and social justice. The theme of this year’s conference was “The Imperial Scholar Revisited,” which covered wide variety of topics, such as traditional knowledge, the history of music, abolitionism, inclusion, institutionalism, and their adjacency to IP.
• In July, IIPSJ Associate Director for International Programs, Dr. Metka Potočnik, attended the 64th World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assemblies (GA) (https://iipsj.org/iipsj-attendance-at-the-64th-world-intellectual-property-organization-general-assemblies/) at the WIPO Headquarters in Geneva and represented IIPSJ as a WIPO Accredited Observer. These assemblies brought together a record number of delegates, with over 1,200 delegates in attendance, which exceeded the pre-Covid numbers of attendance in the General Assemblies.

Community Outreach that Empowers Creators of Color to Share, Protect, and Monetize Their Work

• IIPSJ continued our Intellectual Property for the People Series (https://iipsj.org/programs/ip-for-the-people-open-academy/) to help creators, inventors, and entrepreneurs from communities of color understand and explore the rights and resources available to them. This year’s series included the following free, one-hour webinars: Name/Image/Likeness Rights, IP Basics for Creators, IP for Entrepreneurs, USPTO Provides Trademark Basics for Entrepreneurs, Starting/Funding Your Business, and Business Agreements/Contracts. Replays of all sessions are available on our YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpjeDSnL4i4mPRA4CX44FjLcSUv1CyMug). The series will continue to run in 2024, with necessary topics such as filing patent and trademark applications, and how development of IP works within the context of a business. 
• IIPSJ’s inaugural Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellow (https://iipsj.org/wikimedia-race-and-knowledge-equity-fellowship/), legal expert Shreyanka Mirchandani Changaroth, finished the one-year, full-time fellowship in September, during which time she lead work with IIPSJ to explore ways to impact IP policy in the U.S. through community engagement (https://iipsj.org/wikimedia-highlights-wrke-fellow-contributions-in-inaugural-year-review/). As we look ahead to 2024, IIPSJ is pleased to announce the 2023-2024 Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellows: Kyra Abrams, Akshat Agrawal, Kainen Bell, Albert Fox Cahn, Shubha Ghosh, and Oroma Womeodu (https://iipsj.org/2023-2024-wrke-fellows/).