Brief for appellees motion picture patents company and Edison manufacturing company (1913)

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20 ant's proofs absolutely fail to show either the necessity for such consent or that it was given by the complainant or that the new licenses given by the Patents Company to the otiier licensees were more favorable than the original Edison licenses. The real facts as to the granting of the additional licenses and the cause therefor are as follows: Up to the month of December, 1908, the principal patents affecting the motion picture art in this country were owned by two interests, the Edison interest and the Biograph Company interest, the latter also including the patents of the Armat Company. The Edison patents were two in number, one covering the camera for taking the moving pictures, vi^hich patent had been sustained at final hearing by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the other patent covering the motion picture film. The camera patent was infringed by all the manufacturers of moving pictures in this country and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to pro iuce a camera without infringing the claims of this patent. The film patent covers all commercial moving picture films. The Biograph patents related broadly to apparatus for exhibiting the pictures, one of them covering the shutter, another covering the employment of a loop in the film above and below the intermittent feed device, the third covering the star steel feed, which is used practically on all projecting machines, and various other patents covering other details of importance. The Edison Company had sued the Biograph Company and licensees of the Biograph Company for infringement of its patents, and the Biograph Company had in turn sued the Edison Company for infringement of the Biograph patents. These suits were pressed very vigorously during the late Spring and Summer of 1908, and both interests recognized that if the several patents were sustained the Edison patents would prevent the Biograph interests from manufacturing pictures and the Biograph patents would prevent the Edison Company and its licensees from satisfactorily exhibiting the pictures. It was, therefoie, a case where some sort of settlement was advisable and the two interests, after a good deal of negotiation, reached a