The United States of America, petitioner, v. Motion Picture Patents Company and others, defendants (1912)

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16 OEIGINAL PETITION. It is provided that the agreement shall continue until the expiration of all the Vitagraph patents. Upon the termination of the agreement for any of the causes named, the Patents Company shall reassign the patents to the Vitagraph Company. V. THE MANUFACTURERS' LICENSE AGREEMENTS ENTERED INTO WITH THE MOTION PICTURE PATENTS COMPANY. On the same day, December 18, 1908, with the unlawful purposes above mentioned, each of the ten manufacturers named on pages 7-8, supra (except the Melies Company, whose president joined later and formed another company), hereinafter called Patents Company, licensees, concluded with the Motion Picture Patents Company a license agreement, each license being practically identical with every other license. The terms of these license agreements had been determined at numerous earlier conferences between defendants. Each agreement regulated in every detail the manner in which the manufacturer should do business, which was to be the same for all the manufacturers. Each agreement licensed the manufacturer to manufacture and use moving-picture cameras embodying the inventions of the patents and to ^^manufacture, print, and produce positive motion pictures embodying the inventions of said reissued Letters Patent No. 12192 and to lease the same in the United States * * *." These agreements were licenses under the camera and film patents and are to be distinguished from the licenses to the manufacturers of exhibiting machines to be later described. A copy of the license agreement dated December 18, 1908, between the Motion Picture Patents Company and the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, now named the Biograph Company, is attached hereto as a part of this petition, marked ''Exhibit 3.^' This agreement, substan