The law of motion pictures (1918)

WHERE BASED UPON A DRAMATIC COMPOSITION 5 living actors, and sought to restrain them. The latter counterclaimed that even assuming they had nothing but the right of stage production, nevertheless they were entitled to enjoin the plaintiff from making a motion picture version of the play during the term of the license. While the court found that the defendants Klaw & Erlanger had been merely granted a license to produce the play upon the stage with living actors and restrained them from making a motion picture version thereof, yet it granted judgment on the counterclaim, enjoining and restraining the plaintiffs, Harper Brothers, from making a motion picture reproduction of the play during the life of the license. However, the original grant to produce the play upon the stage with living actors, does not divest the author of his right to produce the play in motion pictures. His right to produce the play in motion pictures is merely suspended during the term of the license granted by him to the producer of the play upon the stage. When the agreement granting the exclusive license is silent on the question as to whether the play is to be produced with living persons upon the stage or fails to mention any other specific method of production, — in other words, where the author grants “all dramatization rights,” the licensee secures not only the exclusive right to produce the play upon the stage with living actors, but he secures as wrell the exclusive right to make motion picture reproductions of such play.5 5 Photo Drama Motion Picture 448, Lacombe, J.: “One KaufCo. v. Social Uplift Film Corpora man wrote a novel entitled ‘The lion (1915), 220 Fed. (C. C. A.) House of Bondage.’ He assigned