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 #:
00080
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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2530 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 256. mercial, having for its object the accomplishment of the same result as if it really owned a valid patent. ''They studiously ignore our challenge to show us wherein their alleged patent has been strengthened, or in what manner its legality has been established, since the decision of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals was handed down on March 10, 1902. They have not answered the dictum of the highest court in the United States that passed upon the matter. They prayed an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, which refused to interfere, and the decision therefore stands as the final adjudication of the highest court of the United States that would entertain the action. The Court said at that time: "It is obvious that Mr. Edison was not a pioneer in the large sense of the term, or in the more limited sense in which lie would have been if he had also invented the film. He was not the inventor of the film. He was not the first inventor of apparatus capable of producing suitable negatives taken from practically a single point of view, in single line sequence, upon a film like his, and embodying the same general means of rotating drums and shutters, for bringing the sensitized surface across the lens and exposing successive portions of it in rapid succession. Attempt to Create Monopoly. " 'The fifth claim of the patent is obviously an attempt b}r the patentee to obtain a monopoly of the product of the apparatus described in the patent, so that in the event it should turn out that his apparatus is not patentable, or the product could be made by apparatus not infringing his, he could nevertheless enjoy the exclusive right of making it/ (This refers to the film claim.) "The burden is on the Edison Manufacturing Co. to make the court reverse itself, and I do not know of an instance in which a lower United States Court, in a similar case, where the decision of the upper court shows the most profound investigation and unanimity of opinion, has not followed the upper court; and I do not believe that the attorneys for the Edison Manufacturing Co. can cite a single instance of a parallel case in which such procedure was had. "I have previously shown that the rights of the Biograph Co. under the Latham patent are stronger by virtue of their