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 #:
000186
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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164 Opinion on Camera and Film Patent. claim is invalid. Hatch v. Moffitt (C. C.) 15 Fed. 252; Wooster v. Calhoun, 11 Blatchf., 215, Fed. Cas. No. 18,035; Excelsior Needle Co. v. Union Needle Co. (C. C.) 32 Fed., 221; Smith v. Nichols, 21 Wall, 112, 22 L. Ed., 5G6; Locomotive Works v. Medart, 158 U. S., 79, 15 Sup. Ct., 745, 39 L. Ed., 899. By the terms of the claim the length of the film is not defined, nor is the number of photographs which it is to represent defined. It is to be an unbroken transparent or translucent, tapelike, photographic film ; it is to have thereon equidistant photographs of successive positions of an object in motion; these photographs are to be arranged in a continuous, straight-line sequence; and the number of them is not limited, save by the length of the film. The film was not new, and if the other characteristics of the product are not new, or are new only in the sense that they add to the article merely a superiority of finish or a greater accuracy of detail, the claim is destitute of patentable novelty. In determining the scope and patentable subject-matter of this claim, the proceedings in reference to its allowance in the patent office should be referred to. In the original application for the patent the sensitized surface was described as "in the form of a long gelatine tape film." April 18, 1896, the application was amended as to specification and claims so that the word "gelatine" was omitted from the description of the film. The substituted specification of that application contains this statement : "The sensitized surface is preferably in the form of a long tape, although it may be a cylindrical surface on which the photographs are taken in a spiral line;" and, in referring to the drawings, states that "3 indicates the transparent or translucent tape film, which before the apparatus is put in operation is all coiled on a reel," etc. In that application, for the first time, a claim was made for the product. After the claim, as originally phrased in that application, had been rejected by the i^atent office, it was amended by the applicant to read as follows : "(8) An unbroken transparent or translucent tape film, having thereon a continuous series of equidistant photographs of an object in motion, arranged in a single straight-line sequence, substantially as set forth." This claim was again rejected upon a reference to the Le