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 #:
000187
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. 165 Prince patent. As finally allowed by the office, it was allowed 1 upon the statement as follows : "As to claims 8 and 9, while as drawn they have been properly rejected on account of the Le Prince tape film, they can be distinguished therefrom by amending the claims to indicate that the number of photographs in the series is unlimited, except by the length of the film, as distinguished from the Le Prince film, in which the number in a straight-line sequence is limited to four, whatever the length of the film." 2 In view of these proceedings, and the acquiescence of the patentee in the limitations imposed upon the claim by the patent office, its novelty depends mainly upon the length of the film. This feature of the claim is satisfied by any film which is long enough to carry a sufficent number of successive pictures to reproduce, when properly used, some definite cycle of movements to convey the impression of reality to the observer. A film having this characteristic was not new, in the sense that its production involved invention. The Du Cos apparatus was capable of taking the requisite number of pic ~ tures in series suitable for using in an exhibiting apparatus. Prof. Morton, the expert for the complainant, in his testimony, conceded that a series of photographs of an object in motion could have been taken upon a paper strip by the camera of the certificate of addition of the Du Cos patent, and these negatives might have been transferred to a translucent paper strip, as a series of positives, and that it would have required no invention, in view of the instructions which Du Cos gives as to doing this, to prepare such a strip of paper with a series of pictures upon it. He differentiates the film of the claim from the film which could have been thus 4 produced in the fact that the pictures, not having been taken from a single lens, would not all be taken from the same point of view. This conclusion, however, overlooks the fact that practically the images were produced from the same point of view in the Du Cos apparatus — the single aperture through which the lenses operate — and that it is quite immaterial whether the same point of vieAv is obtained by the use of a single lens, or by the use of a number of lenses, for the purpose of meeting this characteristic of the claim.