In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1913)

Record Details:

Title:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants
Date:
1913
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants : record volume 3
Leaf #:
00059
Language:
English
Collection:
Early Cinema and Government & Law
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
September 21, 2023
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H. N. Marvin, Direct Examination. 1285 picture strips, in violation of the terms of the licenses to the manuacturers or the rental exchanges, might, as they often did, find their way into the hands of unlicensed individuals, and become the instruments by which the patents of the Patents Company on projecting machines were infringed by unlicensed users. Frequently these films were stolen, and they were found in unlicensed places of exhibition in infringing use. And the only way that that could be properly stopped was by having the right of replevin in those motion picture strips rest with the producer. Q. Do you know whether prices have been materially increased to exhibitors throughout the country since the formation of the Patents Company? A. Prices of exchanges to exhibitors? Eental prices? Q. Yes. A. I don't think that the prices of exchanges to exhibitors have been materially increased. Q. What do you say regarding the prices of theatrical production itself, at motion picture theatres throughout the country? A. Prices of admission to motion picture theatres have gradually been increased. And by that I mean that there are now a larger number of theatres of the better class, that charge a higher price of admission, than there were formerly. Of course, there still exist a number of the Nickelodeons, as they are called, the small store shows where the admission is five cents, but the advance of the art has been such, and the demand of the public has been such, that theatre managers have been warranted in spending large sums of money in equipping very fine theatres, to which they are compelled to ask a higher price of admission, and they produce there an exhibition which is attractive to well-to-do people, and is freely patronized by them, and where they pay a price of admission considerably more than the original five cent price. Q. Would you say that the increased price of admission in theatres to which you have referred, is due in any way to the increased price of service? A. No. It is possible in very many localities to see the same performance, the same dramatic performance, in one theatre for five cents, and in another theatre for fifty cents. I have in mind at this moment a theatre of this kind, that was erected at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars, which is as fine a building, probably, as any theatre building in New York City, which is devoted exclusively to the exhibition