The White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Ensuring the Broadest Participation in the American IP and Innovation Ecosystem

On April 23, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order entitled “The White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” The White House HBCU Initiative reflects the Administration’s acknowledgement of and support for the critical role that HBCU institutions continue to play in ensuring that all Americans enjoy the opportunity to excel through and contribute to the national advancement, including through participation in the American IP regime and Innovation Ecosystem.  

The White House HBCU Initiative expressly recognizes that “Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) remain integral to American students’ pursuit of prosperity and wellbeing, providing the pathway to a career and a better life.” Through the Initiative, the Trump Administration pledges to “continue the work begun during [the] first [Trump] Administration to elevate the value and impact of our Nation’s HBCUs as beacons of educational excellence and economic opportunity that serve as some of the best cultivators of tomorrow’s leaders in business, government, academia, and the military.”

Among The White House HBCU Initiative’s core goals include “providing professional development opportunities for HBCU students to help build America’s workforce in technology, healthcare, manufacturing, finance, and other high-growth industries…working to advance…key priorities related to promoting innovation and excellence throughout HBCUs in consultation with HBCU leaders, representatives, students, and alumni [and]  collaborating with agencies to improve the competitiveness of HBCUs for other sources of Federal research and development funding”.

Just as IP achievement remains at the forefront of American advancement in science, and technology, and the arts, The White House HBCU Initiative is an important component of a comprehensive strategy for ensuring that all Americans enjoy meaningful opportunities through which to develop and exploit their innovative and artistic talents, through academic research and technology transfer, and other entrepreneurial commercialization of their resulting accomplishments.

Through The White House HBCU Initiative, the Trump Administration takes an important step towards ensuring that every American cohort, including rural communities, veterans, elder citizens, and those who have educated themselves in non-elite or non-traditional settings, such as trade schools, and community colleges, as well as in more traditional HBCU settings, are all able to enjoy the opportunity and the privilege to participate in and contribute to America’s innovation and artistic storehouse.  

IIPSJ commends the Trump Administration for this effort to effectuate a balanced approach to promoting nationwide IP engagement fully consonant with the IIPSJ Mission. We hope you will review the full text of “The White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” 

2024 End of Year Recap

As we close another successful year, we want to highlight some of the impact of your contributions for 2024:

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.
• Working with our various academic partners, IIPSJ organized the 10th annual IP MOSAIC Conference (https://iipsj.org/programs/ip-mosaic/). The theme was Looking Forward, Looking Back: IP Social Justice & Promoting Human Ingenuity.

Diversifying the Legal Field and the Intellectual Property Bar

• For twenty-one years, the IIPSJ IP and Social Justice CLE program (https://iipsj.org/2024-ip-social-justice-cle-recap/) has provided a venue through which to showcase minority and women IP attorneys. The 21st Annual IP & Social Justice CLE program (https://www.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 organized the 6th 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, Blockchain and more. 
• In September, IIPSJ participated in the 2nd Innovator Diversity Pilots Conference (https://law.emory.edu/impact/conferences/innovator-diversity-pilots-conference.html), where the USPTO, the National Council on Patent Practicum (NCPP), Adapt.Legal and a host of sponsors came together to discuss projects and effective practices to increase participation in innovation. IIPSJ was a Silver Sponsor of this year’s conference, and IIPSJ Founder and Director Lateef Mtima moderated the Law Firm Diversity Initiatives panel, which discussed innovative law firm initiatives to facilitate the entry of diverse candidates into IP-related fields.
• 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 an interview with patent litigation attorney Esther Lim. 
• IIPSJ launched the HBCU IP and Tech Law Summit Intellectual Property (IP) Internship Grant Program, which was sponsored by INTA Foundation. Under this grant program, we sought to enable students enrolled in a participating HBCU law school to work as unpaid interns for public interest organizations in connection with trademark, copyright, and other IP matters. This grant program supported students who would not be able to participate in an unpaid internship without receiving additional monetary support.

Advocacy for Participation in the Intellectual Property System

• The Cambridge Handbook of Intellectual Property and Social Justice was published, which was co-edited by IIPSJ Director Lateef Mtima and Assoc. Director Steven Jamar.
• In July, IIPSJ Associate Director for International Programs, Dr. Metka Potočnik, attended the 65th World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assemblies (GA) (https://iipsj.org/iipsj-attendance-at-the-65th-world-intellectual-property-organization-general-assemblies/) at the WIPO Headquarters in Geneva and represented IIPSJ as a WIPO Accredited Observer. Dr. Potočnik delivered an oral statement (https://iipsj.org/blog-post-iipsj-oral-statement-to-wipo/) and attended the length of the proceedings in person.

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: Practical Guidance on Protecting your Patent and Trademark, How to go from Inventor to Entrepreneur, IP for Entrepreneurs, and Innovation and IP. Replays of all sessions are available on our YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpjeDSnL4i4mPRA4CX44FjLcSUv1CyMug). The series will continue to run in 2025, with necessary topics such as avoiding pitfalls in the trademark application process and fashion law. 
• In conjunction with the Howard University School of Law and Wikimedia, IIPSJ continued the Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellowship (https://iipsj.org/wikimedia-race-and-knowledge-equity-fellowship/) and hosted six Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellows (https://iipsj.org/2023-2024-wrke-fellows/).

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.