Patent law will always be a unique crossover of the legal field with scientific and engineering disciplines. As computer technology takes its place in the landscape of civilization, patent law has had an increasingly difficult time keeping pace with the revolution.

The parallel development of internet technology, particularly e-business, has further compounded the problem by adding another non-legal field of expertise into patent law while at the same time, raising the monetary stakes. Only recently has software programming gained adequate recognition as patentable subject matter. With the relatively recent collapse of the business method exception to patent subject matter and the curtailed application of the mathematical algorithm exception to software, what is to be done with ebusiness inventions and more importantly, why?