In Gayler v. Wilder (1850) 51 U.S. 477, Wilder had acquired from its inventor all rights to the "Salamander Safe" subsequent to the filing of an application for letters patent. But this seems a matter of degree only, with respect to the inchoate "right" that the inventor seeks to protect. It does not ripen into a legal title until the patent is granted. It was early held with respect to patents that: "it was obviously not the intention of the legislature to permit several monopolies to be made out of one, and divided among different persons. Such a division would inevitably lead to fraudulent impositions and would subject a party who, under a mistake as to his rights, used the invention to be harassed by a multiplicity of suits instead of one, and to successive recoveries of damages by different persons holding different portions of the patent right." Chief Justice Taney stated: "The inventor of a new and useful improvement certainly has no exclusive right to it, until he obtains a patent. This right is created by the patent, and no suit can be maintained by the inventor against anyone for using it before the patent is issued. But the discoverer of a new and useful improvement is vested by law with an inchoate right to its exclusive use, which he may perfect and make absolute by proceeding in the manner which the law requires." The Supreme Court said that "no rights can be acquired in the patent unless authorized by statute, and in the manner the statute prescribes." The Supreme Court addressed the distinction between an assignment of an undivided interest in a patent, which confers standing to sue for infringement, and a license, which does not confer standing to sue for infringement. (Id. at 495.) Under the decision by the Supreme Court in Gayler et al. v. Wilder, an unpatented invention or idea is but an inchoate right and "the inventor certainly has no exclusive right to it until he obtains a patent and no suit can be maintained for using it before the patent is issued."