The social embeddedness of patent production and its local dimension

The importance of patents and intellectual propriety is growing in the so-called knowledge economy. Scholars from different disciplines are also exploring the local dimension of the patent production. The essay recognizes and discusses four main approaches that deal with the local dimension of patent production. The first one focuses on the knowledge spillovers process. The second one emphasizes the market coordination of the patent related innovation activities, instead of the organizational dimension underlined by the third one. The last approach explores the local based biotechnology activity from an economic sociology point of view. The author's purpose is to highlight the implications of these approaches in understanding the social construction of the innovation at the local scale.