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

Record Details:

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24 OEIGINAL PETITION. VII. LICENSED EXHIBITORS. After January 1, 1909, the defendants commenced to do business in accordance with the terms of the unlawful combination which they had formed and in which they are now engaged, and thereafter not one of the thousands of theater owners or exhibitors in the United States could obtain for exhibition purposes a motion picture manufactured by any of the ten manufacturers, comprising all the manufacturers and importers at that time doing business in the United States, unless the Patent Company recognized him and gave his name as a licensed exhibitor to the licensed exchanges. In order to secure a license, the exhibitor has to obligate himself to use upon his machines only pictures manufactured by the licensed manufacturers. The exhibitor has to pay on every exhibiting machine owned by him $2 a week to the Patents Company; this so-called exhibitor's royalty applies to machines sold years before to the exhibitor without any conditions being attached to the sale. No two exchanges are permitted to serve the same exhibitor during the same period. Breach by a rental exchange or by an exhibitor of any of the conditions imposed by the defendants through the Patents Company subjects such rental exchange or exhibitor to an immediate cancellation of his license. The power and monopoly of the defendants became absolute. Defendants, through the Patents Company, were enabled to and did determine whether new motion picture theaters should or should not be opened and whether old ones should be closed, although defendants had no proprietary interest in such theaters. This power defendants have exercised and continue to exercise arbitrarily and unreasonably through the Patents Company. Whenever the Patents Company cancels the license of a rental exchange it sends notice thereof to all the