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THE MOTION PICTURES PATENTS COMPANY 81
ment, he met William Fox and resigned from the city service to become Fox's chief lieutenant and to build a movie career that proved to be an unusually brilliant one.
Fox, violently disagreeing with the trust's attorneys that its patents afforded it immunity from attack under the Sherman Law, brought suit against the patents-film combination under the treble damages provision of this act — "treble damages" meaning that if the injured party could prove damages amounting to a certain sum the courts would award him an amount equal to thrice that sum. Other distributors followed Fox's example in filing suits, their claims eventually amounting to more than
$20,000,000.
Patrick Powers, after producing in several small units for awhile, organized Universal Film Company, the trade name indicating a supply of all items needed by exhibitors for a complete program. Carl Laemmle and Robert Cochrane manufactured and distributed movies under the name of the Independent Motion Pictures Company, abbreviated to "Imp." Imp was impish in deed as well as in name. Cochrane's powerful and impudent advertisements in trade journals were an important factor in the final overthrow of the trust. Laemmle, Powers, and several other producers and a number of exchange owners in leading cities, merged their interests in Universal Film Company, remaining together during a few years of hectic internal strife, until Powers and the others sold their stock to Laemmle, placing him in control of the company, with Cochrane as his right-hand man. Powers, upon leaving Universal, continued in production and distribution under various corporate names.
Harry Aitken, salesman for a film exchange in Chicago, John R. Freuler, Milwaukee realtor, and Samuel S. Hutchinson, Chicago druggist, after some nickelodeon and exchange experience, formed the Mutual Film Company which eventually embraced Thanhauser and a dozen or more other producers who became well known and successful.
Adam Kessel and Charles Bauman, book-makers put out of business by the laws against race-track betting, became promi