Answer to Community Patent Consultation

[This is NLnet's official reaction on the Community Patent Consultation by the EU about software patents] Stichting NLnet is a Dutch foundation which works on the advancement of internet technology following a strict Open Source philosophy. Our organisation is affected when we are unable to determine accurately whether the software products developed in our projects are "legal" in other member states, so we are exposed to a significant and unmanageable risk when we pursue our main goal: making all our results freely available to use, read, modify and/or redistribute in any country. The greatest advantage of the current European patent system, based on EPC law, with respect to (e.g.) the US patent system is that it largely protects innovation from the predation of patent speculators (also called "patent trolls"). Ironically, the higher cost of patents improves the quality of patents, as can be seen from the US, which has very low patent costs, and very low general quality of patent claims. The UK study mentioned in the Commission's impact assessment of the software patents directive (which received replies from 11 UK SMEs) showed that these SMEs in general did not care about patents. A Community Innovation Office, which bases its recommendations on input from businesses, academics and civil society, and which can formulate all-encompassing innovation strategies, would be much more productive and useful than yet another attempt to force the EU into following the EPO's case law.