Horace Gray

“ There are, indeed, decisions in the Circuit Courts that an assignee in insolvency, or a receiver, of all the property of a debtor, appointed under the laws of a State, does not, by virtue of the general assignment or appointment merely, without any conveyance made by the debtor or specifically ordered by the court, acquire a title in patent-rights. ”

“ A patent or a copyright, which vests the sole and exclusive right of making, using, and vending the invention, or of publishing and selling the book, in the person to whom it has been granted by the government, as against all persons not deriving title through him, is property, capable of being assigned by him at his pleasure, although his assignment, unless recorded in the proper office, is void against subsequent purchasers or mortgagees for a valuable consideration without notice. ”

“ There is nothing in any act of Congress, or in the nature of the rights themselves, to give them locality anywhere, so as to subject them to the process of courts having jurisdiction limited by the lines of States and districts. That an execution out of the Court of Common Pleas for the County of Bristol, in the State of Massachusetts, can be levied on an incorporeal right subsisting in Rhode Island or New York, will hardly be pretended. ”