Nearly 67% of the country consists of cultivated land, about 8% is devoted to forestry, and about 4% is uncultivated. The Netherlands is one of the most commercial countries of the world. Industry is highly developed. There are iron works, lime kilns, brick and tile kilns, potato mills, strawboard factories, tobacco factories, cocoa, flour, margarine, and artificial fertilizer works, carpentry works, electric bulb works, radio works, motor-car works, plastic works, cement factories, cotton, weaving and spinning mills, artificial silk factories, show works, chemical industries, cigar and cigarette factories, rice mills, oil factories, paper mills, engine works, distilleries, breweries, shipyards, candle works, potteries, saw mills and sugar refineries.

The Netherlands, headed by a hereditary constitutional monarchy (King Willem-Alexander der Nederlanden), are a party to the Benelux Customs Union (with Belgium and Luxembourg), and to the European Union.

As of October 10, 2010, with the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, the overseas part of the Netherlands is the BES Islands (consisting of the Caribbean islands Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, which are now considered “special municipalities” of the Netherlands; Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten being autonomous States within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, each having its own independent Intellectual Property Office. The Dutch Patents Act 1995 also applies to Curaçao and Sint Maarten, with the exception of Chapter 7 relating to Supplementary Protection Certificates.