by John Marshall Harlan

“ The Court of Appeals of Kentucky held this construction of the Constitution and the laws of the United States to be inadmissible, and in that opinion we concur.
Congress is given power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. To that end it may, by all necessary and proper laws, secure to inventors, for limited times, the exclusive right to their inventions. That power has been exerted in the various statutes prescribing the terms and conditions upon which letters-patent may be obtained. ”

“ We are of opinion that the right conferred upon the patentee and his assigns to use and vend the corporeal thing or article, brought into existence by the application of the patented discovery, must be exercised in subordination to the police regulations which the State established by the statute of 1874. It is not to be supposed that Congress intended to authorize or regulate the sale, within a State, of tangible personal property which that State declares to be unfit and unsafe for use, and by statute has prohibited from being sold or offered for sale within her limits. ”

“ It was held by Chief Justice Shaw to be a settled principle, 'growing out of the nature of well-ordered society, that every holder of property, however absolute and unqualified may be his title, holds it under the implied liability that his use of it shall not be injurious to the equal enjoyment of others having an equal right to the enjoyment of their property, nor injurious to the rights of the community.' Commonwealth v. ”

“ By the settled doctrines of this court the police power extends, at least, to the protection of the lives, the health, and the property of the community against the injurious exercise by any citizen of his own rights. ”

“ Although the inventor had at all times the right to enjoy the fruits of his own ingenuity, in every lawful form of which its use was susceptible, yet, before the enactment of the statute, he had not the power of preventing others from participating in that enjoyment to the same extent with himself ”

“ Upon the trial of the case it was agreed that the Aurora oil could not, by any chemical combination described in the patent, be made to conform to the standard or test required by the Kentucky statute as a prerequisite to the right, within that State, to sell, or to offer for sale, illuminating oils of the kind designated. ”

“ It is embraced in what Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden, calls that 'immense mass of legislation' which can be most advantageously exercised by the States, and over which the national authorities cannot assume supervision or control. ”