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

Record Details:

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OKIGINAL PETITION. 37 able condition attached to the use of a patented machine by the owner of the patent acting singly and in good faith in order to protect his lawful monopoly, but each condition is one and a part of a combination of conditions and restrictions devised by a combination of all the defendants, all the conditions applying collectively to and interlocking the use of all the machines. These restrictions and unlawful restraints dovetail into each other in such a manner that the manufacturer, the rental exchange, and the exhibitor must use all or none of the machines covered by the different patents. He can use no others. With the object of concealing their true purposes and the the real character of the combination, defendants devised, adopted, and enforced the so-called license agreements, attempting to give to their actions a lawful appearance and to the combination a legal form. In the agreements they embodied unlaw^ful restraints upon commerce, styled by defendants qualifications upon the use of patented machines, but in fact unreasonable, undue, and oppressive restraints arbitrarily imposed by them upon commerce in articles not patented. As previously pointed out, by far the largest and most important part of the commerce relating to the motionpicture art is the commerce in positive films, of which millions of running feet are distributed each week throughout the United States and subsequently displayed by thousands of exhibitors throughout the country. The combination of defendants was devised to restrain that commerce. Such positive films are not patented. Reissued Letters Patent 12192 (attached hereto as a part hereof, marked ^^ Exhibit 9^0? made by defendants the basic patent of their combination, relates only to the negative film. The positive film, (which is sometimes copyrighted by the producer), is the product of the negative, being developed and printed from