The U.S. Supreme Court case Straus and Straus, composing the firm of R.H. Macy & Company, v. American Publishers' Association in 1913 revolved around a dispute over copyright law and its intersection with antitrust laws. The plaintiffs, owners of Macy's department store, challenged an agreement among publishers that set fixed prices for copyrighted books sold to retailers like themselves under the Copyright Act of 1909. They argued this was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act which prohibits business activities that reduce competition in the marketplace such as price fixing agreements between competitors (publishers). The court ruled in favor of Macy's stating that while copyright holders do have exclusive rights to their work under federal law, they cannot use those rights to violate antitrust laws by creating monopolies or restraining trade through price-fixing schemes.

In the dissenting opinion for Straus and Straus v. American Publishers' Association, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that the majority's decision to rule against a price-fixing agreement among publishers was misguided. He believed that such agreements were not inherently illegal or harmful to competition, but rather could serve as legitimate business strategies in certain contexts. In this case, he felt that the publishers had a valid reason for wanting to maintain control over their book prices - namely, preventing retailers from selling them at excessively low rates and thereby devaluing their products in consumers' eyes. Furthermore, Holmes disagreed with the majority's interpretation of copyright law; he did not believe it gave authors an absolute right to set their own prices without any restrictions whatsoever.