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 #:
000179
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. 157 commercial use, at the rate of eight or ten a second, supposing them to be two or three inches square; hut he insists that the dry paper then known was not sufficiently sensitized to permit this to be done. Prior to January, 1888, a sensitive film better adapted for instantaneous impression was in commercial use with photographers, and in that month a patent was obtained in this country by Le Prince for a method of, and apparatus for, producing animated pictures. The apparatus included a camera for producing the negatives upon an endless strip of sensitive film, "or any quick-acting paper, such as Eastman's paper film." The camera apparatus was a series of lenses arranged in two or more rows, and two or more strips of film. Each strip of film is unwound from a supply spool, and drawn across the field of its row of lenses by a take-up spool. The lenses are provided with shutters which open and allow them to operate upon the film at the proper time. By means of mutilated guides upon a shaft operated by a crank or other motor, the two takeup spools are alternately revolved, and draw first one film and then the other the required distance to receive its series of impressions, while by means of other guides connected with the driving shaft the shutters of the lenses are successively opened to permit an impression to be projected upon the film while it is at rest. Thus the apparatus is equipped with means for moving two strips of film alternately and successively, and with lenses and shutters which at the proper moment open and allow the lenses to operate upon the strips of film as they are successively brought to rest. Le Prince subsequently, and in 1888, obtained an English patent for the same apparatus, a complete specification of which was published December 8, 1888. This patent contains a suggestion that only a single lens may be employed, as follows: "When provided with only one lens, as it sometimes may be, it is so constructed that the sensitive film is intermittently operated at the roar of said lens, which is provided with a properly timed intermittently operated shutter." The mechanism adapted to co-operate with a singlelens camera is not described.