Rubber Company v. Goodyear Rubber Company v. Goodyear Rubber Co. v. Goodyear, 76 U.S. (9 Wall.) 788 (1869), is an early decision of the United States Supreme Court recognizing the right of a patent owner to license another person to practice the invention only in a limited field, and holding that such a licensee committed patent infringement when it made and sold products of the invention outside that field. Charles Goodyear invented a process for "vulcanizing" rubber by heating it to a high temperature in the presence of sulfur and lead carbonate or another chemical, so that it was converted from a soft, sticky,
Union Sulphur Company land. He assumed that the sulfur deposits extended laterally underneath his property, and he planned to extract the sulfur with a new method. He would insert three pipes down into the sulfur. Super-heated water would be pumped down one pipe to melt the sulfur, and compressed air would be pumped down another pipe. The increased pressure from the compressed air would then force the molten sulfur up through the empty third pipe. Upon drilling on his property, however, Frasch discovered that the sulfur was only located beneath the American Sulphur Company property. The American Sulfur Company was not a fly-by-night