[Europe] has the talent, is mostly developed, with free trade laws and no software patents. Unfortunately, while we have so far kept EU-level legislation legit

[Europe] has the talent, is mostly developed, with free trade laws and no software patents. Unfortunately, while we have so far kept EU-level legislation legitimising software patents off the books, the price seems to be a continuing lack of consistency in patent rules across Europe. They may not be called software patents, but that doesn't mean there haven't been patents granted in some jurisdictions that you or I might describe in those terms. Whether any such patents would be enforceable in practice is another question again, but now we’re back to whether you have the stomach to get into a lawsuit over it, and a largely unquantifiable threat to software businesses. The main thing holding Europe back right now is language. Well, that and the fact that it’s still relatively difficult to accept money from customers on-line. We’ve been looking into this lately, and in some ways the situation does seem to be improving. However, for whatever reason our payment services market here still seems to be lagging several years behind what is available in some other places, notably the US. To us, this is a far bigger practical problem than any theoretical concerns about software patents.