In the case of William Cramp & Sons Ship & Engine Building Company v. International Curtiss Marine Turbine Company, 1912, the U.S Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a patent held by the defendant company for a marine propulsion system was valid and enforceable. The plaintiff company had been sued for infringement of this patent after it used similar technology in its own shipbuilding operations. The court ruled that while some aspects of the patented design were indeed novel and worthy of protection, others were simply improvements on existing technologies already widely known and used within the industry. Therefore, they concluded that only those elements which represented genuine innovation could be protected under patent law; all other parts fell into public domain due to their common use in maritime engineering prior to issuance of defendant's patent. This decision clarified how courts should distinguish between truly original inventions deserving legal protection from mere enhancements or modifications made upon pre-existing designs.

The dissenting opinion in the case of William Cramp & Sons Ship & Engine Building Company v. International Curtiss Marine Turbine Company argued that the majority's decision to uphold a lower court ruling, which found that Cramp had infringed upon Curtiss' patent rights, was incorrect. The dissent contended that there were significant differences between the two designs and thus no infringement occurred. They also disagreed with the majority's interpretation of what constituted an "inventive step", arguing it should be based on whether or not a person skilled in relevant technology could have easily come up with such design without any inventive effort. Furthermore, they believed that even if some elements were similar, this did not necessarily mean one design was derived from another; similarities could simply be due to both designs addressing same technical problem using common knowledge available at time.