In the United States v. The John Barth Company et al., 1928, the Supreme Court ruled on a dispute involving patent rights and infringement claims. The John Barth Company held patents for machinery used in malt houses and claimed that other companies had infringed upon their patents. However, the court found that there was no evidence of direct copying or imitation of design by these accused companies. Instead, they were using similar but not identical machines which performed essentially the same function as those patented by Barth Co., but with different mechanisms and principles of operation. The court therefore concluded that there was no patent infringement since it is not enough to have invented some new and useful improvement in machinery; rather one must also show that others are making use of his invention without his consent. In this case, while both sets of machines served a common purpose - facilitating malting processes - they did so through distinct methods thus negating any claim for patent violation.

In the dissenting opinion for United States v. The John Barth Company et al., Justice Holmes disagreed with the majority's interpretation of the Tariff Act of 1922. He argued that Congress intended to tax imported machinery at a rate based on its value when new, not its depreciated value at time of importation. According to him, it was illogical and against common sense to assume that Congress would have wanted an old machine taxed as if it were new without explicitly stating so in the law. Furthermore, he pointed out inconsistencies in how different types of property were being treated under this interpretation - used personal effects are taxed according to their present worth while used machinery is taxed as though it were brand-new. This discrepancy led him to believe that such an outcome could not have been what lawmakers intended when they wrote and passed the legislation.