Linus Torvalds comments: "The experiences from the USA demonstrate that software patents don't benefit anyone but perhaps the patent lawyers. They will just weaken the market and increase spending on patents and litigation, at the expense of technological innovation and research." He continues: "We hope that the members of European Parliament see these negative sides and don't push the same chaos to the old continent."

Alan Cox notes: "Currently, the companies are moving programming jobs offshore. The huge move away from the USA is not entirely driven by pricing but also by patent litigation and risk. Companies create a US holding company for the intellectual property rights which licenses it to a non-US body to write the software overseas and import it, so as to reduce risk." He stresses: "Adopting the same kind of patents in the EU will drive thousands of EU programming jobs overseas, too."

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