1 Time and space relations between scientific production and patenting of knowledge . The case of nanotechnologies

In the last decades of the 20 th century the studies on the relations between the production of knowledge, the protection of the deriving intellectual property and its exploitation for practical purpose have grown in all areas of social sciences. This is mainly due to the increasing economic importance of knowledge-generated externalities (Dasgupta and David, 1994). Karl H. Marx has probably been the first to describe the importance of invention and innovation as determinant drivers for economy (Rosenberg 1974; Rosenberg 1976; Rosenberg 1980; Rosenberg 2011). In particular, he was the first to ask the question on the characters of the technologies allowing application of scientific knowledge to the sphere of production. For Marx the principles of science have to be incorporated in the impersonal characters of machines, and technological change can't be understood properly only examining the contribution of single individuals: history needs the presence of a single name besides an invention, but what is called into question is a process of accumulation of useful knowledge to which many people give basic contribution. Science, in Marx's vision, is a fundamental factor for the growth in resource productivity. After Marx the role of Joseph Schumpeter is universally recognized, starting from the idea of innovation as a new recombination of existing elements, accounting for the cumulative character of technology and technical know-how, and from the central role of the entrepreneur. Schumpeter marks the difference between invention (purely technological or scientific) and innovation, consisting in " doing something new " in the economic and productive system. Innovation may or may not spring out of invention, as " innovation is possible without a corresponding invention " (Schumpeter 1928). Schumpeter describes innovation as the fundamental engine of realization of profits (Schumpeter 1942). In the same years Vannevar Bush, in his Report to the President of the United States of America " Science, the endless frontier " made evident the connection between all the stages of scientific research, technology and innovation (Bush 1945). Dosi (1982) defines the nature of " technological paradigms " , describing the path of the evolution of knowledge into innovation. In his fundamental article he stresses " the general weakness of market mechanisms in the ex ante selection of technological directions especially at the initial stage of the history of an industry " (p. 155). According to this idea it is then important to explore this ex ante stage – involving the …