I know they are not the same as a patent troll but I find repulsive the idea of silencing and threatening this guy:

> I’ve written some code (100% my own) and implemented my own methods for matching music. There are some key differences with the algorithm Shazam uses. The code isn’t published yet, but I was planning on releasing it under Apache License to the open source community soon

Edit: of course if you are OK with software patents then it's perfectly logic. I am happy I don't live in a country where software patents exist.

IANAL but actually the "software" - patent "system" in european has been under changes since around ~2000 which means that there would not have been any problem in releasing his code... (https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/epc/2016/e...) (basically they are not de jure, but they would have a hard time to actually enforce this, if it is trivially).

actually the lawyer did make a strange assumption..

well there would still be a problem if he ever want to travel outside the eu where somebody could actually claim the infrigdement.

(Edit: in germany where I live there were patent processes about that matter in ~2000 and the federal court ruled in favor of the patent, however after/at the end of 2000 they basically always rejected them.)