IP Protections Advance Latinos in Tech

Strong patent protections have made the United States a global high-tech leader for the past half century. World Intellectual Property Day -- April 26 -- recognizes the power of IP to advance the public interest through the creation of new products and to give underrepresented inventors a chance to participate in America's innovation ecosystem.

While Hispanic Americans are still underrepresented in STEM fields -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- there has been progress worth celebrating.  Hispanics make up about 8% of STEM workers, up 1% from 2016. Some high-profile members of this group include Lilian Rincon, senior director of product management at Google; Diana Trujillo, an aerospace engineer and flight director at NASA; and Luis von Ahn, co-founder of reCAPTCHA and Duolingo.

Entrepreneurship is another important path being pursued by Latinos. It can offer a way to bypass institutional discrimination.  In 2021, almost 25% of new U.S. entrepreneurs were Latino. There are approximately five million Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States, generating more than $800 billion in revenue each year. For Latino employers between 2019 and 2022, the median revenue growth rate was 25%. Yet Hispanic small business owners face challenges -- not least that they're denied financing at higher rates than their White counterparts.

For some entrepreneurs, patents are their most powerful tool for attracting investors. Without the security provided by strong and predictable IP laws, investors have less incentive to back risky and expensive projects.

For example, the cost of inventing and bringing a single new drug to market exceeds $2 billion on average. The Food and Drug Administration approves just 12% of drug candidates that make it to clinical trials. Those are chilling odds, even for the most bullish investors. Strong IP protections make those risks more attractive by ensuring that there will be a way to recuperate those costs.

Consider rare disease research. Around 30 million Americans are living with a rare disease, defined as a condition affecting fewer than 200,000 patients. These small patient populations create a conundrum for drug researchers, who often have greater incentives to focus their research on treatments for more common ailments, like cancer or diabetes. But enhanced IP protections have helped bring hundreds of new drugs to patients over the past 40 years.

Back in the 1980s, lawmakers strengthened intellectual property rights by allowing academic institutions to patent and license their discoveries to the private sector. These legal changes unleashed an era of American innovation that continues to this day. Today, IP-intensive industries support some 63 million jobs, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Everyone benefits from the products, medicines, and technologies that come from innovative industries. Thanks to strong patent protections, people are living longer, healthier, and more prosperous lives. Unfortunately, some policy makers and activists are seeking to weaken IP protections. That would only hurt the people they are intending to help.

We have IP protection to thank for unleashing the potential of American ingenuity. Let's not undermine the source of so many overdue American success stories.

Rosa Mendoza is the Founder, President, and CEO of ALLvanza, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the success of Latinxs, and other underserved communities, in our innovation- and technology-based society.