In the case of Title Guaranty & Trust Company of Scranton, Pennsylvania v. Crane Company in 1910, the Supreme Court ruled on a dispute over patent rights and royalties. The plaintiff, Title Guaranty & Trust Co., was acting as trustee for an inventor who had assigned his patents to them. They sued Crane Co., alleging that they were infringing upon these patents by manufacturing similar products without paying royalties. However, Crane Co argued that they had purchased the right to use these inventions from another company before the assignment took place and therefore owed no royalties. The court sided with Crane Co., ruling that their purchase agreement did indeed predate the assignment of patents to Title Guaranty & Trust Co.. Therefore, they were not obligated to pay any additional fees or stop production on their existing product lines based on those designs. This decision reinforced principles regarding patent law and property rights - specifically how timing plays into ownership disputes.

In the dissenting opinion for Title Guaranty & Trust Company of Scranton, Pennsylvania v. Crane Company, Justice Holmes disagreed with the majority's interpretation of a contract clause regarding patent rights. He argued that the language in question was not ambiguous and should be interpreted as granting an exclusive license to use patented technology rather than transferring ownership of the patents themselves. The justice believed that this reading was more consistent with common business practices and legal principles surrounding patent law at that time. Furthermore, he criticized his colleagues for ignoring evidence from lower court proceedings which supported this interpretation and instead relying on their own assumptions about what parties intended when they drafted contracts like these.