Congress is given the power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

The granting by the United States of a patent right does not give to the patentee the authority to exercise it in a State in violation of the police laws of that State.

In Patterson v. Kentucky37 the court say: "The right which the patentee or his assignee possesses in the property, created by the application of a patented discovery, must be enjoyed subject the Constitution to its care. The strong arm of the National Government may be put forth to brush away all obstructions to the freedom of interstate commerce or the transportation of the mails. If the emergency arises, the army of the nation, and all its militia, are at the service of the nation to compel obedience to its laws."

36 In United States v. Kirby, 7 Wall. 482; 19 L. ed. 278, the court say: "No officer or employee of the United States is placed by his position, or the services he is called to perform, above responsibility to the legal tribunals of the country, and to the ordinary processes for his arrest and detention, when accused of felony, in the form prescribed by the Constitution and laws. The public inconvenience which may occasionally follow from the temporary delay in the transmission of the mail caused by the arrest of its carriers upon such charges, is far less than that which would arise from the extending to them the immunity for which the counsel of the government contends. Indeed, it may be doubted whether it is competent for Congress to exempt the employees of the United States from arrests in criminal processes from the state courts and when the crimes charged against them are not merely mala prohibita, but are mala in se. But whether legislation of that character be constitutional or not, no intention to extend such exemption should be attributed to Congress unless clearly manifested by its language."

37 97 U. S. 501; 24 L. ed. 1115.

to the complete and salutary power with which the States have never parted, of so defining and regulating the sale and use of property within their respective limits as to afford protection to the many against the injurious conduct of the few. The right of property in the physical substance, which is the fruit of the discovery, is altogether distinct from the right in the discovery itself, lust as the property in the instruments or plate by which copies of a map are multiplied is distinct from the copyright of the map itself. . . . The right to sell . . . was not derived from the patent; that right existed before the patent, and, unless prohibited by valid local laws, could have been exercised without the grant of letters patent. The right which the patent primarily secures is the exclusive right in the discovery, which is an incorporeal right. . . . The enjoyment of that incorporeal right may be secured and protected by national authority against all hostile state legislation; but the tangible property which comes into existence by the application of the discovery is not beyond the control, as to its use, of state legislation, simply because the inventor acquires a monopoly in the discovery."

Applying the principles of the Patterson v. Kentucky case the court in Webber v. Virginia38 sustained the power of the State to require the payment of a license fee for the sale of sewing-machines, even though these machines were manufactured under a United States patent.39

The relation of the taxing and other powers of the States to patent rights granted by the United States is more fully discussed in Section 48.