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 #:
000182
Language:
English
Collection:
Early Cinema and Government & Law
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 21, 2023
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160 Opinion on Camera and Film Patent. taking negatives of objects in motion, and at a rate sufficiently high to result in persistence of vision, the prior art does not disclose the specific type of apparatus which is described in his patent. His apparatus is capable of using a single sensitized and flexible film of great length with a singlelens camera, and of producing an indefinite number of negatives on such a film Avith a rapidity theretofore unknown. The Du Cos apparatus requires the use of a large number of lenses in succession, and both the lens and the sensitized surface are in continuous motion while the picture is being taken; whereas in the apparatus of the patent but a single lens is employed, which is always at rest, and the film is also at rest at the time when the negative is being taken. Nor is it provided with means for passing the sensitized surface across the camera lenses at the very high rate of speed, which is a feature, though not an essential feature, of the patented apparatus. The Le Prince apparatus employs two or more rows of lenses, and two or more strips of film, which move alternately and successively, the lenses of each operating upon its appropriate strip, and the shutters of the lenses opening successively as the strips are brought to rest; and, although its devices permit the exposures for the production of successive pictures to be made in rapid succession, they require a slow movement of the film. Pictures taken in such apparatus are not taken from the "same point of view" as they are when taken from a single stationary lens. This would result in producing, when such pictures are subsequently combined for persistence of vision in their exhibition, a greater or less indefiniteness of outline and conformation as to movement. Again, the pictures are not taken in a regular succession, as on a single strip, but a short series are taken on one strip, then a short succeeding series on another strip, and so on, with the result that to use these pictures for exhibition in any convenient way would require them to be cut up and rearranged, or apparatus would have to be employed for so moving and feeding them as to obtain the proper arrangement of their positives for the purposes of exhibition, which is indicated in the Le Prince patent. Those taken by the apparatus of the patent in suit can be reproduced by a precisely corresponding positive. The suggestion that one lens may be employed, implying, of course, the use of a single film, is quite enigmatical, and would seem to be impractic