Winfried Schäfer
CEO of Pentaprise GmbH

The flexibility of our ERP systems gives our customers strategic advantages when it can be integrated with other hard- and software systems. Due to our broad competency in many fields of industrial and operational programming we usually quickly and on a reasonable budget implement the customer's workflow.

On the other hand, developing customized software always is overshadowed by the risk that one spends ample time into design and implementation of software mechanisms and then later it turns out that the chosen approach runs into patent risks. Introducing software patents now would add to the design stage and implementation phase a third patent search stage. This would increase costs for our customers, especially as a patent examination usually only gives an estimated guess, but not a guarantee with regards to the non-violation of patents.

Hence we consider an introduction of software patents to be an unnecessary act of governmental bureaucracy and to be a threat to the economic agility of our local industry. Conversely, we welcome the approach to exlude data processing from patentability as chosen by the European Parliament in its First Reading as the desirable legislative approach.