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 #:
000188
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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166 Opinion on Reissue 12,037. We conclude that the court below erred in sustaining the validity of the claims in controversy, and that the decree should be reversed, with costs, and with instructions to the court below to dismiss the bill. Petitioner's Exhibit No. 59. IV. Edison v. American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. On Reissue Patent 12,037. Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. 151 Fed. Rep., 767. Before Wallace, Lacombe, and Coxe, Circuit Judges. Lacombe, Circuit Judge (after stating the facts). Upon the appeal in the first suit we discussed the prior art and the general character of the device sought to be patented at very great length. It is unnecessary to repeat that discussion. All that was said in the prior opinion, however, may be considered as embodied herein, since the conclusion hereinafter expressed is founded upon the findings then made, and which nothing in the present record or argument induces us to qualify in any manner. We held that Edison was "not a pioneer in the large sense of the term, or in the limited sense in which he would have been if he had invented the film. He was not the inventor of the film. He was not the first inventor of apparatus capable of producing suitable negatives, taken from practically a single point of view, in singleline sequence upon a film like his, and embodying the same general means of rotating drums and shutters for bringing the sensitized surface across the lens and exposing successive portions of it in rapid succession. * * * Neither was lie the first inventor of apparatus capable of producing suitable negatives and embodying means for passing a sensitized surface across a single lens camera at a high rate of speed and with an intermittent motion, and for exposing successive portions of the surfaces during periods of rest." Also that "the real invention, if it involved invent ion as distinguished from improvement, probably consists of details of organiza