In the Knoppix site, it is stated very clearly (my emphasis):
Soon the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers will again decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called "software patents" in Europe, which are already used by large companies in other countries to put competitors out of business. This can lead to the termination of many software projects such as KNOPPIX, at least within Europe, because the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. That way, software developers will have to pay the "software-patentholders" for using these features, even in their own, completely self-developed applications, which can completely stall the development of innovative software for small and medium companies. Apart from this, the expense for patent inquiries and legal assistence is high, for even trying to find out if the self-developed software is possibly violating "software-patents", if you want to continue to market your software. Contrary to real patents, "software-patents" are, in the draft proposed by the commission, monopolization of business ideas and methods, even without any tangible technical implementation.
This seems much worse than the American system. To be fair, the existence of a lot of FOSS projects in the US (as RE dude points out) is a good sign. Undoubtfully, Linux will survive in the SCO case, but I fear that another litigating company can do the same, and this time there can be a patent infringement suit, not copyright infringement. Let's hope it doesn't happen.

Take a look at FFII
http://swpat.ffii.org