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)

Page scan 000204 from 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 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 #:
000204
Language:
English
Collection:
Government & Law and Early Cinema
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 12, 2024
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182 Opinion on Reissue 12,192. patent claim has been invested with new and substantial qualities, by reason of the distinct, uniform, equidistant photographs taken of moving objects which, when the negative strip is converted into a positive, can be passed in the same manner through the exhibiting machine and give a lifelike representation of the moving objects, never before obtained. In the course of their argument counsel for plaintiff (appellee) say: "In a word, the film produced by Mr. Edison and described minutely and with accuracy in his patent, represents a practical embodiment of all the elements necessary to complete and perfect practice of the motion picture art as we know it today. No detail seems to have escaped him; no problem growing out of the largest conception of the taking and exhibiting of photographs of moving objects in a lifelike and natural manner seems to have baffled his solution. In saying this we do not mean to say that Mr. Edison, in the patent in suit, foreclosed all further improvements in his camera and in his exhibiting machine, but we do say that this record fully proves that he did supply all of the fundamentals of the film that is used in the art as practiced today." We do not dissent from the proposition that Mr. Edison solved the problems of the motion picture art with great ingenuity and skill, but the problems that he solved were in the camera apparatus wherein his true claim to invention lies. He did not supply the "fundamentals of the film" that is used in the art as practiced today. The long, pliant, translucent, celluloid film, with the sensitized surface was the invention and improvement of others. The pictures taken on such a film are photographs. It is the particular character and arrangement of those pictures for which Mr. Edison is entitled to credit. But those pictures and their arrangement are nothing more than the result of the operation of his improved camera apparatus. The problem that was solved by their production and arrangement was a problem of the camera machinery. Appreciating tliis, he insisted, as we have1 seen, that the complete apparatus should be described "because the differences which distinguished applicant's film from the prior films are largely due to the features of novelty in the apparatus." Also in explaining why he had not referred in any of his numerous caveats to the character of the film, he said that he was not interested in manufacturing photographic