Common Knowledge? Gender Differences in IP Rights Awareness

This paper examines gender disparities in intellectual property (IP) awareness and participation, using the 2023 and 2025 waves of the WIPO Pulse Survey conducted among 58,135 individuals across seventy-four countries. Our findings reveal that copyrights are the most recognized IP forms globally, while patents, trademarks and geographical indications remain the least familiar. At the individual level, women demonstrate lower knowledge of patents and trademarks, but greater knowledge of designs and copyrights compared to men, with these differences persisting after controlling for socioeconomic factors. These patterns are consistent with gendered specialization in education, professional and household spheres where women tend to cluster in creative industries while men dominate entrepreneurship and technical sectors. Notably, we observe a cohort effect: while we identify significant differences in knowledge between men and women for older cohorts, these disappear among younger cohorts. We do not observe comparable changes by level of education or occupation of respondents. Moreover, women exhibit more positive attitudes towards IP-protected products across categories. These findings highlight the need for targeted awareness campaigns and reveal that gendered patterns of IP knowledge may contribute to innovation gender gaps through educational pathways and professional specialization.