Gates came to Brussels for Microsoft's Innovation Day event on 9 November 2006. Much of his keynote speech focused on America's economic strength, for which Gates saw two explanations: "The strength of the universities and incentive systems around things like copyright and patents."
Gates is also clearly in favour of software patents: "If you invent a new approach in software, you should have a patent right in that. This causes venture capital to come in." Gates called the European patent system "a little cumbersome in the way that it works today, the cost and the fragmentation". The idea of an EU community patent dates back to the 1960s, but the dossier is not getting ahead due to ongoing conflicts about languages, tranlations and costs incurred. Gates said: "I think there are some improvements to be made."
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, who also spoke at Innovation Day, had a few more suggestions for boosting innovation in Europe: "The main thing we can do at European level are common standards. There, we should be more active. Then, of course, there are intellectual property rights. It is an important question. Then, we still have to force our member states companies to invest more in R&D, and find out how we can also get small- and medium-sized companies into the networks, where they can find European talent from corporations and universities."
Gates, when asked where he believed Europe's strengths lay, said: "Clearly, there are areas like clean energy, mobile computing, embedded systems, language translation, and you can pick about a dozen topics where Europe today has either a market demand for the product that really spurs investment, or they have got intellectual capacity that is ahead of the other countries."
Asked on possible competition issues with Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system, Gates said: "Competitors tried to get regulators to castrate the product," adding they had largely failed. "I wouldn't say antitrust played any dramatic role." Vista will be available to business users at the end of November 2006; it will be available in stores only two months later.
