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 #:
00073
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
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

II. N. Marvin, Direct Examination. 1299 Defendants' Exhibit No. 41. Exchange Bulletin — No. 12. MOTION PICTURE PATENTS COMPANY 80 Fifth Avenue New York City. August 21, 1909. RETURN OF FILM. The terms of the exchange license agreement between you and this Company, require you to return to each of the film manufacturers and importers on September 1, 1909, a quantity of film equal to the quantity that you leased from the manufacturer or importer during the month of February, 1909, and that none of the film returned shall be more than twelve months old. The license agreements between the film manufacturers and importers and this Company, contain similar requirements relating to the return of film. To enable exchanges to obtain twelve months' use of the most desirable films that they leased from manufacturers and importers under the existing exchange license agreement, we have, for the present, authorized each manufacturer and importer to accept from each exchange, films of any make and age, but the quantity of film sent to each manufacturer and importer must not be less than the quantity that the exchange leased from the manufacturer or importer during the month of February, 1909. During September, 1909, we will not require exchanges that were not in business before September 1, 1908, to return any film to the manufacturers or importers. If an exchange has lost any film by fire or otherwise since February 1, 1909, and has supplied proof of such loss to the manufacturer or importer of such film, within fourteen days after the loss, the quantity of film so lost may be deducted from the quantity that the exchange would be required to return if such loss had not occurred. Each manufacturer and importer will furnish to each exchange, a statement showing the quantity of film that was leased by the exchange from the manufacturer or importer during the month of February, 1909.