The U.S. Supreme Court case Thomas Gibbons v. Aaron Ogden (1824), often referred to as the steamboat monopoly case, is consistently ranked by historians as one of the most important landmark decisions in American jurisprudence. Gibbons v. Ogden represented the first Supreme Court case to tackle the thorny issue of interstate commerce and upheld the right of Congress to regulate travel between state lines. The case originated with the development of steam travel in New York. In 1798 the state chancellor Robert R. Livingston secured a legislative monopoly on steam travel in New York waters. In 1807 Livingston and his partner, the famous inventor Robert Fulton, successfully launched their prototype North River Steam Boat on the Hudson River.