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 #:
000350
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.

328 William Pelzer, Direct Examination. "D." Statement of Undivided Net Profits of General Film Company Remaining After Payment of Dividends on Preferred and Common Stock. Net earnings, June 6, 1910, to Dec. 31, 1910 $ 160,616.15 Net earnings, year 1911 1,118,220.12 1,278,842.57 Less : — Preferred Dividends, years 1910 and 1911. $00,396.65 Common Dividends, years 1910 and 1911 . 21,000.00 81,396.65 11,194,445.92 Less : — Unpaid Dividends .4,002.83 Available for distribution $1,190,443.09 As distributed : — Net profits, 1910 $ 134,863.11 Net profits, 1911 1,055,579.98 $1,190,443.09 Amounts paid 979,327.00 Balance unpaid $ 211,116.03 The Witness : Now, you also wished to know the amount of preferred stock and the deferred cash payments paid for the Waters Canadian Exchanges. That was preferred stock, $36,800, and deferred cash payments $73,900, for five Canadian Exchanges. Q. Yes, what else have you? A. You also asked for the authorization to purchase from exchanges. The only authorization I find is the resolution in the Directors' meeting of May 25, 1910; I can find nothing else in the office in the way of an authorization. Q. What else have you produced? A. That is all I have