The structure is a hashref that contains a single member with key "items" which consists of an arrayref that contains two hashrefs. So you have to dereference the arrayref to get its members something like this:

for my $item( @{$inventors_object->{items}} ){
    print $item->{name} . "\n";
};
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To change the data:

$inventors_object->{items}->[0}->{name} = 'new name';
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To turn it back into a JSON string:

my $new_json = objToJson( $inventors_object );
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update here is your mistake:

@inventors_array = $inventors_obj->{"items"};
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You are trying to turn an arrayref into an array without dereferencing it. Instead you want:

@inventors_array = @{ $inventors_obj->{"items"} };
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