Ponent: Stathis Arapostathis (professor d’Història de la Ciència de la Universitat d’Atenes)

Patenting has frequently been linked with national capacity for innovation. For many economists, patents have become an index of the innovativeness of countries, companies, industrial concerns, and knowledge communities. Current historiographical approaches to innovation and patenting cultures emphasize the co-production of techno-sciences with legal culture as this emerged in the context of an individual country, or through transnational flows of expertise, inventions, inventors and innovations. Furthermore, contemporary research in history of science and technology, stresses the diverse patent strategies of states, and the unwillingness of many to harmonize and comply with international treaties and directives of a transnational character. The overall aim of the present study is to unravel the co-construction of law and the culture of invention in Greece in the 20th century with an emphasis between the years from 1900-1940 but also covering the post WWII developments and the route to the patent law of 1987. I look at the interrelation between the local legal and legislative culture, the Greek politics and innovation policies with the ideology of propertization of knowledge and innovation. My story looks at the transition of the Greek system of patents from a system of privileges to a system of rights, as a transition of the Greek state and the Greek capitalist society. In making my argument emphirically more robust and provide some instances of current historical work from the industries of pharmateuticals, plant breeding and software industries.

Stathis Arapostathis, is Assistant Professor in the History of Science and Technology in the University of Athens. After finishing a DPhil in the University of Oxford he worked in the UK on the history of electrical engineering, the history of intellectual property and well as the historically informed policies relevant to the governance of technologies. He has published on the history of technology as well as on sociotechnical transitions and historically informed technology policy. His latest book co-authored with Graeme Gooday entitled Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities in Britain, 1870-1930 (MIT Press, 2013).

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