Appropriability of scientific and technical information, innovation and standardization of production techniques.

Summary Scientific and technical information constitutes an organized system of knowledge and know-how. It is the main input to the production of material or immaterial goods. As a means of production, it crystallizes the capitalist relations of production in which it has been constructed. Scientific and technical information cannot therefore be understood as a free good that can be disseminated for free. Its appropriation is carried out through the work necessary to its constitution, in the sphere of production. Capitalist competition, which requires the constant renewal of the means of production, is at the origin, within the national systems of innovation, of the combination of scientific and technical information into informational sets systematically integrated into the processes of production. The erratic succession of periods of growth and crisis during the long movements of accumulation multiplies, for large firms, the modalities of appropriation of information and restricts access to the externalities produced by technological innovation. In the current context of global technological competition, firms are organizing themselves into networks that facilitate the appropriation and protection of information that is central to the production process. The standardization, upstream of production, of production techniques and information sets provides innovative firms with monopoly rents that are reinvested, according to profit opportunities, in the processes of knowledge accumulation. The result is the diffusion of protected sets of information and the work methods that correspond to them. In industrial countries, this is at the origin of industrial and wage stratification to the benefit of the most competitive firms and the most qualified individuals. Countries with weak national systems of innovation are faced with the high cost of appropriating information and endogenizing these norms.