In the case of Spalding v. Dickinson, 1895, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with a dispute over land ownership in California that was originally granted by Mexico before it became part of the United States. The plaintiff, Spalding, claimed he had purchased a portion of this land from one Alviso who had received it as an inheritance from his father's Mexican Land Grant known as Rancho Posolmi. However, Dickinson argued that Alviso never legally owned the property because his father’s will did not explicitly mention it and therefore could not have sold it to Spalding. The court ruled in favor of Dickinson stating that under Mexican law at the time when Alviso's father died (which still applied since he died before California became part of US), specific bequests were required for real estate transfers through wills; general bequests would only transfer personal property but not real estate unless specifically mentioned which wasn't done here. Therefore, according to them Alviso didn’t inherit this particular piece and hence couldn't have sold what he didn’t own to Spalding.

The dissenting opinion in the case of Spalding v. Dickinson argued that the majority's decision to uphold a lower court ruling, which found in favor of Mr. Dickinson on grounds of patent infringement by Mr. Spalding, was incorrect due to an erroneous interpretation and application of patent law principles. The dissent contended that there was no substantial evidence showing that Mr. Spalding had infringed upon any new or novel aspects claimed within Mr. Dickinson’s patented invention for improvements in baseballs; rather he merely used common knowledge already available within public domain at the time his own product was created and marketed, thus not constituting as an infringement under existing patent laws.