The European market remains much more fragmented than the American one: entrepreneurs have to grapple with a patchwork of legal codes and an expensive and time-consuming patent system.

欧洲市场较美国市场而言更加分散；创业者们需要服从各种法律规范；专利申请更加耗时费钱。

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This paper makes an analysis of the features of accessing the EPO (European Patent Of- rice) website with its system, category, pattern, sub-field retrieval, Boolean operators discussed.

本文从检索体系、检索范围、报道形式、检索字段、检索算符及显示结果等五个方面，对欧洲专利局网站的检索特点做了深入的解剖。

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Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor said forthcoming legislation on a European patent system, and on further cuts to mobile roaming charges could go some way to boosting the economy.

BBC: Democracy Live site links

An additional concern is that Congress in recent years has completely restructured the U.S. patent system to harmonize it with European and Japanese practice.

FORBES: Globalism and Technology: A Hidden Misconception That Dooms the U.S. Economy

Overall, according to the European Commission, the lack of a unified patent system is one reason why Europe's small and medium-sized technology firms fail to grow as quickly as those in America, Asia and elsewhere.

ECONOMIST: Europe's unwieldy patent regime