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

Record Details:

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21 satisfactory basis of settlement, the result of which was the organization of the Motion Picture Patents Company, to which both the Edison and Biograph interests assigned all the patents owned and controlled by them respectively. The Patents Company was promoted and organized by Mr. Dyer representing the Edison interests and Messrs. Marvin and Kennedy representing the Biograph interests, and neither Mr. Melies nor the complainant nor Lodge, as its representative, had anything to do with it (Dyer, pp 351-354). The evidence shows that the terms of compromise were agreed upon at a meeting of the manufacturing licensees held early in the month of August, 1908, or over a month prior to the time when the Edison patents were assigned to the George Melies Company, and that, while Mr. Melies agreed to the licensing of two additional manufacturers, such consent was in no wise necessary to the compromise, for it received the unanimous approval of all the licensees (Dyer, pp. 351, 352). Lodge's testimony to the effect that he conferred with Mr. Dyer in reference to the promotion of the Motion Picture Patents Company and that Mr. Dyer verbally promised that the Patents Company would issue a license to the complainant is emphatically denied by Mr. Dyer. Practically the only proof offeied hy complainants, in addition to the trade circulars sent out by the Patents Company, in support of the allegations in the bill that the complainant ha.s been deprived of a market for its product or that the defendants have interfered with the complainant in the conduct of its business is that contained in the testimony of Max Lewis and J. J. Lodge. They testified that they called together at the offices of the .American Film Service and the Standard Film Exchange in Chicago, offered to sell or dispose of a picture which they claimed had been made by the George Melies Company and that Mr. Von Ronkel, of the American Film Service, refused to purchase because the George Melies Company had no license and that Mr. Hopp of the Standard Film Exchange refused to buy for the same reason (Max Lewis, pp. J 24, 125; Lodge, p. 206 et seq.). This is absolutely denied by both Mr. Von Ronkel and Mr. Hopp.