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,
Rubber toughening as if the rubber was not present. As temperature increases past the glass transition temperature, the rubber phase will increase the crack initiation energy. At this point the crack self-propagates due to the stored elastic energy in the material. As temperature rises further past the glass transition of the rubber phase, the impact strength of a rubber-polymer composite still dramatically increases as crack propagation requires additional energy input. Epoxy resins are a highly useful class of materials used in engineering applications. Some of these include use for adhesives, fiber-reinforced composites, and electronics coatings. Their rigidity and low crack propagation resistance