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 #:
000330
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:
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.

308 William H. Swanson, Direct Examination. 1 ing, namely, January, 1909, had your profits in the rental exchange business been large? A. I thought they were — Mr. Caldwell (Interrupting) : Objected to. Q. Had your net profits during the preceding years been |100,000 a year or more? A. Yes, sir. Mr. Caldwell : Objected to. Q. Considerably more than that? A. Considerably so, yes, sir. Mr. Willis : Will you put in there an objection to that question as leading? Q. And thereafter, from about the middle of January, until the middle or latter part of February, state whether or not you received film from these different licensed manufacturers? A. Every day. Received them every day. Q. Do you recall whether or not there was any meeting of q different persons interested and engaged in the motion picture business at Mr. Kleine's office in Chicago, towards the middle of February, 1909? A. There was. A very large meeting. Q. What was the occasion of that meeting? A. To discuss the matter of the $2.00 a week royalty of projecting machines being cancelled. Q. How many people, approximately, were present? A. About 50. Perhaps less. Forty or fifty. Q. Were any of the licensed manufacturers there? A. . Yes, sir. Q. Please state who? A. Mr. Selig, of the Selig Polyscope, Mr. Kleine, Mr. Spoor, Mr. John Hardin, representing the Edison Company; and Mr. Montague, representing Pathe, Mr. William Wright, representing Kalem, Mr. John Rock, representing the Yitagraph, and perhaps others, I do not recall just who. Q. And were there a large number of exhibitors there? A. None whatever, that is, not as exhibitors. There might have been exchange men who owned theatres. Q. The body was composed principally of rental exchanges? A. Rental exchanges and projecting machine