Ralf Stiegelmeier
Founder and CEO of IXOPEN

Taking in care that we are a so small company compared to our typical competitors and that we haven't enough economic funds to investigate and get a big enough set defensive patents, we could be an easy target for our competition to be expelled out of the market when they like.
In example, up to now a main business for us has been to develop business workflow solutions in several platforms. But business processes are being patented, so how could our consulting department deal with any "a priori" unknown patent infringement of any of these business process monopolies? Usually customers force us to sign contracts that warranty that we take care of possible punishments of our solutions. It would be enough just one court process to force us to close our business. A business model that we have been running successfully since 7 years ago...
This is the reason that we agree with Mr. Rocard amendments of directive and FFII proposals that clearly state that data processing and business processes aren't patentable materials, as the EPC states, and that delimit what is patentable and what is not with the legal concept of controllable forces of nature.