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 #:
000250
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:
May 23, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

228 Harry N. Marvin, Direct Examination. against the patent, but we do not regard that as conclusive. Q. Is this a true statement on page 11 : "The film contains one essential invention, Edison's only?" A. Yes. 1 so understand it. Q. Is this a true statement, page 8 : "The film is flexible, tough and transparent or translucent ?" A. Is that a true statement? Q. Yes. A. Yes. Q. The first statement appears in the answer at page 11, folio 22, and the second statement, at page 8, folio 19. Now, it is necessary, isn't it, that the film be flexible, tough and transparent or translucent? Those are necessary qualities to a motion picture film? A. Yes. Q, What did Edison do to the film to give it this flexibility? A. I do not think he did anything. The raw stock that Edison used was flexible. Q. The flexibility of the film was given to it by Eastman? A. Well, it was a characteristic of the material that Eastman used. Q. Well, it is a characteristic of the material which Eastman produced? A. Used or produced. (>. Yes, and produced? A. Well, I don't know whether lie made the celluloid base, or whether he bought the celluloid base and improved it. I am not sure about that. Some manufacturers of celluloid film have bought the base from celluloid companies, and coated it. I do not know what Eastman did. Q. The flexibility of the film upon which the picture is printed, — that flexibility does not result from anything that Edison did to the film, does it? A. Oh, no, no. Q. You say toughness is also requisite. Does the toughness of the film, does that result from anything that Edison has done to the film or ever did to the film? A. No. Q. Was it any invention he ever discovered or made? A. Not so far as I know. Q. It was also necessary, you stated, that film be transparent or translucent. Is there anything Edison ever did to the film that made it transparent or translucent? A. I don't think so. Q. Well, do you still maintain that that is an accurate statement in the answer: "The film contains one essential invention, Edison's only?" A. Well, in making that statement in the answer, I had reference to the inventions re