In the 1932 case of Hurn et al. v. Oursler et al., the United States Supreme Court ruled on issues related to copyright infringement and jurisdiction. The plaintiffs, Hurn and others, had written a play that they alleged was copied by Oursler and his co-defendants in their own production without permission or compensation. The defendants argued that there were no substantial similarities between the two works beyond general themes which could not be copyrighted. The court held that federal courts have jurisdiction over both state law claims (unfair competition) and federal law claims (copyright infringement), even if it turns out there is no valid copyright claim as long as both arise from a common nucleus of operative fact - this principle later became known as "pendent jurisdiction". On the issue of copyright infringement itself, while acknowledging some similarities between the plays, it found them insufficient to constitute copying; rather they represented common use of similar ideas or concepts which are not protected under copyright laws.

In the dissenting opinion for Hurn et al. v. Oursler et al., Justice McReynolds disagreed with the majority's decision to uphold jurisdiction over both copyright and unfair competition claims in federal court, arguing that it expanded federal jurisdiction beyond its constitutional limits. He contended that while the copyright claim was within federal purview, the unfair competition claim was a matter of state law and should be handled by state courts unless there is diversity of citizenship between parties involved - which wasn't present in this case. By allowing these two distinct causes of action to be heard together solely because they are derived from a common set of facts, he believed it blurred important distinctions between different types of legal claims and could lead to an unwarranted expansion of federal power at expense of states' rights.