The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) is gathering information for a report to Congress due in October 2019 as required by the Federal Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science (SUCCESS) Act. Lemelson-MIT Executive Director, Stephanie Couch, PhD, gave a testimony at the third public hearing on June 3, 2019. Couch's public testimony references the 25 years of experiences the Lemelson-MIT Program has in awarding national prizes to collegiate and mid-career inventors, and the program's invention education efforts over the past fifteen years to address the questions examined in the hearing. Testimony submitted by LMIT in an effort to inform policies that could create more diversity among inventors.
