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 (1914)

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:
1914
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 5
Leaf #:
00052
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.

2502 Fred C. Aiken, Cross Examination. he testified about litigation in 1908, between the Edison and the Biograph Companies. Mr. Grosvenor: I object to this as manifestly improper, being a reminder by counsel to this witness of the testimony he gave on direct examination. I have a perfect right to cross examine this witness, in order to test his recollection and the accuracy of his statements, without having brought to his attention everything he did testify to, and counsel well knows that is my right on cross examination. 9 Mr. Caldwell : You know perfectly well you have no right to single out a single question from the witness' direct examination for the purpose of confusing him. Mr. Grosvenor: Now repeat the question to him. The question was repeated to the witness as follows: "Q. That was the litigation you had in mind when you testified on direct examination, page 2331, Vol. IV: "Q. Was that litigation a matter of common knowledge in the business in Chicago at that time? 3 A. I think it was. Q. Can you state whether, in fact, that litigation had any injurious effect upon the business at that time? A. So far as I was concerned, it did." The Witness: I don't know that that was the specific case, because I knew of the litigation for many years. By Mr. Grosvenor: Q. What litigation was it you had in mind when you said 4 in your direct examination that it hurt your business? A. I had in mind the litigation, this particular litigation, at that time. Q. That is the litigation in 1908? A. Yes, sir. Q. And particularly the litigation in Chicago, before Judge Kohlsaat? A. Yes, sir. Q. And that was litigation in connection with the film patent, was it not? A. I think it was on the film and camera patents. Q. Was it not particularly in regard to the film patent, upon which Mr. Dyer, of the Edison people, had brought