

European startups and US software patents: Threat or Opportunity? - cageface
http://blog.hashtagify.me/2011/08/04/european-startups-and-us-software-patents-threat-or-opportunity/

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Chris_Newton
_[T]o become a global player in software, success in Europe is not enough: You
need to be validated in the US._

Why?

Sure, the US is a big place, so if you’re making general purpose software
aimed at an English-speaking consumer market then you’d probably want to sell
there. On the other hand, in the Internet age, the US is still only one
potential market, and depending on your niche other markets might be far
larger.

Moreover, the US legal and regulatory environment, including the intellectual
property framework, doesn’t appear to be very welcoming. For some professional
insurance policies and the like, I’ve even been asked whether my company did
business in the US or simply been told outright that work in the US is
excluded from cover.

I don’t want to overstate the case, but it would certainly be possible to run
a successful global software business, based in Europe or otherwise, without
having anything to do with the US at all.

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danmaz74
OP here. My point is that today in software - especially consumer software -
the USA is the reference market, the one the whole world looks up to to
understand the most current trends.

Do you think that, for a Chinese, hearing that software X is the most
successful in the USA is the same as hearing that it is the most successful in
the EU? I don't think so (whatever I could like to think).

~~~
Chris_Newton
_My point is that today in software - especially consumer software - the USA
is the reference market, the one the whole world looks up to to understand the
most current trends._

And my point is that I don’t necessarily accept that premise. I think you’re
overgeneralizing.

For example, I’m working on a start-up right now that provides an on-line
training aid for ballroom dancers. Obviously that’s a niche market, and it
turns out that this kind of dancing is insanely popular in some countries and
almost unknown in others. Here’s the kicker in this case: there are two major
variations of ballroom, which are known as “American style” and “International
style”, for much the reasons you’d expect. If you’re looking for trends, you
have to take that difference in the prevailing culture into account.

Of course most markets won’t have quite such an obvious and US-centric
polarisation as we happen to have in our field. I’m just trying to illustrate
that in any kind of specialist market, you have to look at the local culture
in different places, not just the language they speak and the size of the
population.

~~~
danmaz74
Problem is, that if you have to look at the local culture in different places,
becoming globally famous becomes much more difficult anyway.

However, I didn't want to mean that it's impossible to become global without
being validated in the US. Just that it's much (very much, imho) more
difficult.

~~~
Chris_Newton
_Problem is, that if you have to look at the local culture in different
places, becoming globally famous becomes much more difficult anyway._

Sure. No-one said running a business with a global market was going to be
easy. :-)

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adrianmn
So when is an Europe based company actually considered as entering the us
market and fall under us patent laws?

(edit)The question is about web companies, located outside US but selling to
us customers(software,web apps, ebooks ... - digital products).

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atirip
Define, what do you think in "entering the us market". Europe based companies
can not (even accidentally) fall under US laws. US laws apply only on US soil.

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rahoulb
Isn't that the point of the TVShack extradition? A UK citizen running a site
hosted in Sweden (I think) is extradited for breaking US copyright laws?

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madewulf
This whole "Europe could become the new center of the world" sounds like
wishful thinking to me. Asia seems a far better bet.

~~~
brador
People seem to forget Europe is the largest economy in the world. It has the
talent, is mostly developed, with free trade laws and no software patents.

The main thing holding Europe back right now is language. With a unified
language Europe would be an amazing market to aim for.

~~~
Chris_Newton
_[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.

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kristofferR
Are software patents really hindering innovation in the US? What startups were
stopped because of software patents?

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danmaz74
I (OP) was talking about a trend, not a current problem.

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Weaponx2007a
Europe has its advantages and the US too. But what keeps startups from going
to an island state where some of these problems aren't even in their
dictionary?

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drpgq
Anyone one know the state of software patents for Canada?

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sanxiyn
Relevant: <http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Canada>

