There is an interesting paradox going on with the unification of the markets in EU.<p>Last year Denmark voted for the Unified Patent Court. The obvious argument was that it made it easier for the little inventors to get their patents approved across all of europe. It removed bureaucracy and it made it cheaper.<p>But here is the thing. By making it easier to get your patents approved in one country to be valid in all of EU countries you are also opening up for patent trolls because now it&#x27;s much cheaper for them to try and get patents.<p>So in a weird way many would argue it&#x27;s going to have the opposite effect. It&#x27;s going to make it easier for those who specialize in patents to start getting access to markets it was too expensive before. (In fact a US patent troll has been setting up their office in Ireland exactly because of the expected unification of the Patent Process)<p>For startups the unification is also presenting itself as kind of a headache because when you unify something a bunch of countries have to adhere to whatever the unification results in. So again it sounds great on paper but the consequence might well be unfortunate.<p>And now this. Which sounds great but is going to present more problems than it&#x27;s solving.<p>What Europe really need is for the taxation side of the markets to be unified NOT the legislative process yet this is exactly what the EU does again and again and it&#x27;s hurting more than it&#x27;s helping.<p>I wrote more about this issue in this essay for those who might be interested: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;000fff.org&#x2F;why-is-europe-failing-to-create-more-unicorns" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;000fff.org&#x2F;why-is-europe-failing-to-create-more-unico...</a>