The EU continues its efforts to harmonize local patent laws -- a controversial topic that has run into problems in the past (often over issues involving software patents). While making the process work across all countries, rather than having to file separate patent applications with different rules in each country, makes some sense, it seems that part of the plan is also to create an entirely separate EU-wide court just for patents. If this sounds familiar, that's because the US did this (though under somewhat different circumstances) back in the early 1980s, and many attribute that special court, CAFC, for many of the problems with today's patent system. That's because once the court is designated as focusing solely on patents, it becomes dominated by former patent attorneys -- for whom patents become an end in themselves, rather than a means for increasing actual innovation. CAFC was responsible for expanding what was patentable to things like software and business methods, as well as generally siding with patent holders above challengers. All of this gave a lot more power to patent holders, leading to many more patents being filed, resulting in the overload of today's patent examiners. If the purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation, the final arbiters determining how the patent system should work shouldn't be those who benefit from patents, but those who benefit from actual innovation. Unfortunately, when people assume that patents are a proxy for innovation (something that's been shown as false) the focus is only on generating more patents, not more innovation.