642
Opinion of the Court
by the Fifth Amendment.7 The United States declines to defend the Act as based on the Just Compensation Clause, but joins in College Savings' defense of the Act as designed to prevent a State from depriving a patentee of property without due process of law. Florida Prepaid contends that Congress may not invoke § 5 to protect property interests that it has created in the first place under Article I. Patents, however, have long been considered a species of property. See Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How. 183, 197 (1857) ("For, by the laws of the United States, the rights of a party under a patent are his private property"); cf., Consolidated Fruit-Jar Co. v. Wright, 94 U. S. 92, 96 (1877) ("A patent for an invention is as much property as a patent for land"). As such, they are surely included within the "property" of which no person may be deprived by a State without due process of law. And if the Due Process Clause protects patents, we know of no reason why Congress might not legislate against their deprivation without due process under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Though patents may be considered "property" for purposes of our analysis, the legislative record still provides little support for the proposition that Congress sought to remedy a Fourteenth Amendment violation in enacting the Patent Remedy Act. The Due Process Clause provides, "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, § 1 (emphasis added). This Court has accordingly held that "[i]n procedural due process claims, the deprivation by
7 There is no suggestion in the language of the statute itself, or in the House or Senate Reports of the bill which became the statute, that Congress had in mind the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Since Congress was so explicit about invoking its authority under Article I and its authority to prevent a State from depriving a person of property without due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment, we think this omission precludes consideration of the Just Compensation Clause as a basis for the Patent Remedy Act.
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