BACK FROM GERMANY: I just returned from Germany today, where I spoke to clients and law firms about the American experience with software patents. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the EU Parliment is going to botch this one up, as the people there told me that Parliment is deathly afraid of crossing the small software company owners (who also happen to run Linux and other open-source products). As a result, it is going to be a while before the EU makes a decision on this, and in any case, they are likely to restrict the types of software that can be patented. I think this is bad policy for Europe and it will likely result in a larger gap between US and EU technological innovations.