In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1913)

Page scan 000156 from In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants

Record Details:

Title:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants
Date:
1913
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants : record volume 1
Leaf #:
000156
Language:
English
Collection:
Government & Law and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
September 12, 2024
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134 Ex. 55, Statement by Biograph Cov Mch. 14, '08. is unnecessary to repeat that discussion. All that was said in the prior opinion, however, may be considered as embodied herein, since the conclusion hereinafter expressed is founded upon the findings then made, and which nothing in the present record or argument induces us to qualify in any manner. We held that Edison was not a pioneer in the large sense of the term, or in the limited sense in which he would have been if he had invented the film. He was not the inventor of the film. He was not the first inventor of apparatus capable of producing suitable negatives, taken from practically a single point of view, in single line sequence upon a film like his." From the above it will be seen that none of the three suits brought by Edison against this company has been decided in Edison's favor, but on the contrary, that all three suits were decided adversely to Edison with the single exception that in the last action the Court found that three of the four claims of the Edison reissue were valid if limited to the special form of camera shown and described in his patent. The camera of the Edison patent in question, is not, however, capable of producing long lengths of picture film, and has not been used b}^ the Edison Manufacturing Company for a number of years, if ever, for the commercial manufacture of standard films. On the contrary, not only the Edison Company, but others engaged in the manufacture of such films have been compelled to adopt the camera of the Latham Patent No. 707,934, dated April 26, 1902. The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company owns the Latham Patent and has a suit pending against the Edison Company for infringing it. AMERICAN MUTOSCOPE & BIOGRAPH CO. Mr. Caldwell: Petitioner's Exhibits Nos. 54 and 55, are objected to as irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial, and as at most a mere statement 1>3T the