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)

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 #:
000177
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:
May 23, 2024
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Opinion on Camera and Film Patent. 155 distant photographs of successive positions of an object in motion, all taken from the same point of view, such photographs being arranged in a continuous, straight-line sequence, unlimited in number, save by the length of the film, substantially as described. " According to the views of the expert for the complainant, the first claim covers every apparatus comprising — First, any means whatever capable of intermittently projecting, at such rapid rate as to result in persistence of vision, images of successive positions of the object or objects in motion, as observed from a fixed and single point of view; second, a sensitized, tapelike film; and, third, any means or mechanism or device for so moving the film, either continuously or intermittently, or both continuously and intermittently, as to cause the successive images to be received thereon separately and in a single-line sequence. According to his view, the scope of the second claim is identical with that of the first, except that it is limited to a single camera, with a single lens, as the means for projecting the images onto the sensitized surface, and the third claim differs from the second only in that it is restricted to the intermittent movement of the film, and to the exposure of the film during the periods of rest. We think this interpretation of the claim is the reasonable one, and the question of their validity is to be determined by giving to them this scope. The photographic reproduction of moving objects, the production from the negatives of a series of pictures representing the succesive stages of motion, and the presentation of them by an exhibiting apparatus to the eye of the spectator in such rapid sequence as to blend them together, and give the effect of a single picture in which the objects are moving, had been accomplished long before Mr. Edison entered the field. The patent in suit pertains merely to that branch of the art which consists of the production of suitable negatives. The introduction of instantaneous photography, by facilitating the taking of the negatives with the necessary rapidity to secure what is termed "persistence of vision,'' led to the devising of cameras for using sensitized plates and bringing them successively