Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc. (1988)
- Docket
- 87-1346
- Decided
- 1988-01-01
Summary
Question: Does a state statute, which prohibits the use of the direct molding process of a vessel that does not have patent protection and the sale of the duplicates, conflict with the federal patent law and therefore make it invalid under the Supremacy Clause of the Eleventh Amendment? Conclusion: Yes. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court, which held that, under the Federal Constitution’s Supremacy Clause of the Eleventh Amendment, the federal patent system prevents the Florida statute. The Florida statute offered patent-like protection for ideas deemed unprotected under the federal patent system. This protection restricted the public’s ability to use unpatented designs, which conflicted with the free competition in ideas without patent protection that the federal patent system supported. Therefore, this Florida statute entered into a field of regulation that the patent laws have reserved for Congress, and Congress had declined to exercise.