Conversation with Kathy Bowrey coming up!

Posted on April 18, 2021April 20, 2021 by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

On Thursday, April 22, the first of our three zoom conversations jointly organized by PASSIM and ISHTIP (The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property) takes place! This will be a great opportunity not only to listen to Kathy Bowrey talk about her new book with Brad Sherman and PASSIM’s own Martin Fredriksson, but to reboot the interdisciplinary dialogue on intellectual property more generally. What are the methods, materials, approaches and assumptions we bring to this particular brand of scholarship? ISHTIP has been absolutely central here. But before we can meet again in person in 2022, ISHTIP too will take place via zoom this summer.

Awaiting that time in July, join us for one or all three conversations and keep the dialogue going!

To join this discussion: https://unsw.zoom.us/j/88412339834

New PASSIM article! “Linking science to technology: the patent paper citation and the rise of patentometrics in the 1980s”

Posted on April 15, 2021April 15, 2021 by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

Earlier this week Björn Hammarfelt’s first paper in the PASSIM-project was published in Journal of Documention. The article titled “Linking science to technology: the patent paper citation and the rise of patentometrics in the 1980s” can be described as a conceptual history of the “patent paper citation.” The study analyses how a further interest for patents as scientific documents from several domains, including research policy, bibliometrics and the sociology of science was evident during the 1980s. In many ways the patent was treated as just another document containing scientific information, and the patent citation was viewed as readily available indicator for answering key questions in contemporarydeliberations on the role of scientific research in relation to technological development. In representing these links, patents, and patent citations, became a common point of reference which allowed for measurement and comparison of entities that otherwise appear as separate and non-calculable. The paper concludes by arguing for a broader more reflexive understanding of references in patents, including their social, legal and rhetorical function.

The full text can be accessed here: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-12-2020-0218/full/html

Interdisciplinary conversations

Posted on April 9, 2021February 20, 2022 by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

One of the common outputs from the PASSIM-project is something we call “interdisciplinary conversations.” Up until this time last year, we assumed that these conversations would take place in person, that they would involve a face-to-face dialogue between two scholars coming from different disciplines but sharing interest in a common object, event or phenomenon of relevance to PASSIM. Our first conversation was on microfilm, with PASSIM’s José Bellido and Matts Lindström from Uppsala University. The conversation could be followed live and it was archived on our website www.passim.se. And then the pandemic struck and zoom became the arena for the next dialogue; the discussion between PASSIM’s Ph.D candidate Isabelle Strömstedt and Annika Öhrner, touching on Isabelle’s work on the 50-year anniversary exhibition of the Swedish Patent Office in 1941 and what exhibition studies might bring to our understanding of how the patent office displays and “sells itself” within a museum space.

I’m writing this a few hours before we go online once again, this time to talk about patent agencies and patent offices with colleagues in Madrid (and anybody who wants to join) – a discussion that, once again, was supposed to have taken place IN Madrid last year.

But I also want to promote three upcoming conversations in the next couple of weeks that we organize jointly with ISHTIP, The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property. We’ll start promoting the first talk via Twitter next week! But please make a note of these dates and join us for an hour of intense and creative discussions!!

22 April: GMT 11am/ CET 12 noon/ Pacific 3am/Atlantic 6am/Australian Eastern 8pm. ‘Commodification of creativity’, Kathy Bowrey in conversation with Martin Fredriksson and Brad Sherman.

May 4: 2am Californian time; 10am London, 11 am CET, 7pm Sydney. ‘Patent Capital in the COVID-19 Pandemic’, Hyo Yoon Kang in conversation with Javier Lezaun and Mario Biagioli.

May 20: GMT 11am/ CET 12 noon/ Pacific 3am/Atlantic 6am/Australian Eastern 8pm. ‘Cultural Heritage and IP’, Fiona Macmillan in conversation with Kathy Bowrey and Jose Bellido.