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 #:
000183
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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Opinion on Camera and Film Patent. 161 able, without altering the principle of his apparatus. The problem of dispensing Avith the other lenses would involve changing the mechanism so as to secure a rapid movement of the film. We are not satisfied that the apparatus is inoperative, but incline to the opinion that the alleged defects are merely in details of construction, which would be readily obviated by the skilled mechanic. The presumption arising from the grant of the United States patent must prevail in the absence of proof to overthrow it. The Marey apparatus employs the same general combination of parts specified in the first and third claims of the patent, except the tape film, to produce the negatives; but it is not adapted to produce them upon the film of the patent, and it would require modifications to enable it to do so ; but whether such as would involve invention, or merely mechanical skill, is a debatable question. It enables negatives of an animate object, showing the various phases of motion, to be produced by projecting images of the moving object, as observed from a fixed and single point of view, or from a fixed and successive point of view, upon the successively advanced portions of the sensitized surface, and in sequence thereon, and at such a rapid rate of succession that the movements can be naturally reproduced to the eye by bringing the developed photographs successively into view. It is capable of taking 12 pictures per second, each image requiring an exposure of l-720th part of a second. Although his revolver was designed to get successive pictures for an analysis of the movements of objects, and not for the purpose of taking negatives for reproduction and use in an exhibiting apparatus, it seems manifest that it could have been adapted by changes in the parts, obvious to the skilled mechanic, to produce negatives suitable for reproduction and use in such an apparatus. The Levison publication wTould not be of value were it not that the broad claims of the patent do not call for the employment of any specific operative devices, except the single camera and the sensitized tape film. The important question is whether the invention was in such sense a primary one as to authorize the claims based upon it. The general statements in the specification imply that Mr. Edison was the creator of the art to which the patent relates, and the descriptive parts are carefully framed to lay the foundation for generic claims which are not to be