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 #:
00099
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.

Petitioner's Exhibit No. 259. 2549 Judge Kohlsaat : "I think if they are sending out any circular based on that order entered here they had better stop/' Attorney Rector's Argument. Mr. Rector then argued as follows : "The patent sued on is a re-issue of a re-issue. The original patent on which the first re-issue was granted relating to these photographic films, was held invalid by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. When the first reissue was obtained suit was brought upon that re-issue and was discontinued four years ago. Then this second re-issue was obtained, and a suit was brought in New York in November, 1904, on this same patent, against identically the same sort of films complained of here. In these suits the defendant's proofs, as the petitioner shows, were closed in February, 1906, more than two years ago, and the defendant has continued from that day to this to manufacture and sell the identical films complained of, and the complainant here, the owner of this patent, has made no move whatsoever to bring that cause to a hearing, although it has been in its power for two years past to bring that suit to a hearing, and have an adjudication upon its patent. "Now, instead of bringing that case to trial and securing an adjudication, it comes out here on March 6 and brings suit against the Kleine Optical company and George Kleine personally ; on March 16 it files three suits against customers of the defendant; on March 17 three more; on March 23 another; on March 24 another; on March 30 another; on March 31 another; on April 11 two such suits are filed at Milwaukee against customers; April 20 we have three more at Cleveland. Discusses Advertising Literature. "On the day after your Honor granted the order in this case it filed eight more in this court, after the service of this petition, and in St. Louis it files two more. In all its advertising literature set forth in this petition it is threatening to sue all of the customers of this defendant, and it has iix bills of complaint in printed form so it can write in the name of the defendant and send them out broadcast, and it