Editing Gibbons v. Ogden (section)

==Decision of Supreme Court==
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gibbons on the grounds that Congress has the right to regulate interstate commerce. The sole decided source of Congress's power to promulgate the law at issue was the Commerce Clause. Accordingly, the Court had to answer whether the law regulated "commerce" that was "among the several states." With respect to "commerce," the Court held that commerce is more than mere traffic and is the trade of commodities, a broader definition that includes navigation. The Court interpreted "among" to mean "intermingled with:"

<blockquote>If, as has always been understood, the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects, the power over commerce with foreign nations and among the several States is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government, having in its Constitution the same restrictions on the exercise of the power as are found in the Constitution of the United States.</blockquote>

The part of the ruling that stated that any license granted under the Federal Coasting Act of 1793 takes precedence over any similar license granted by a state is also in the spirit of the [[Supremacy Clause]] although the Court did not specifically cite that clause.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

The Court did not discuss the argument pressed for Gibbons by [[William Wirt (Attorney General)|U.S. Attorney General Wirt]] that the federal patent laws pre-empted New York's patent grant to Fulton and Livingston.<ref>Marshall, however, wrote in the last two sentences of his opinion, "I have not touched upon the right of the States to grant patents for inventions or improvements generally, because it does not necessarily arise in this cause. It is enough for all the purposes of this decision if they cannot exercise it so as to restrain free intercourse among the States." 221 U.S. at 239.</ref> That question remained undecided for the next 140 years until the Supreme Court held in ''[[Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co.]]'' (1964) that federal patent law pre-empted similar state laws.