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 000353 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 #:
000353
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
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.

William Pklzer, Direct Examination. Q. And this $900,000 is represented by notes running over a period of two and a half years from to-day? A. No notes were issued; payments were provided for by contract. Q. That is to say, the General Film Company under its contracts on purchases of the exchanges paid so much cash, and then agreed to pay the deferred payments running over a period of several years? A. Yes, sir. Q. Has the General Film Company been required to borrow money at any time in order to make these payments for the exchanges? Mr. Caldwell : Objected to as irrelevant and incompetent. A. I believe not ; in fact I never heard of such a thing. Q. In other words, the exchanges purchased have been paid for out of the earnings of the General Film Company? A. Yes, sir. Q. And the $1,200,000 you referred to, which has been paid by the General Film Company as part payment for the exchanges, has all been paid out of the earnings of the General Film Company? A. Yes, sir. Q. And in the same manner you expect to pay the other $900,000 out of earnings without borrowing money in the period covered by the different payments? A. Yes, sir. Q. Then under the plan the General Film Company expects to pay for all of these fifty-seven exchanges out of profits within a period of three or four years from the organization of the General Film Company and without borrowing any money? A. Within a period of five years. Q. Without borrowing any money? A. Yes, sir. Q. This statement of the net profits of the General Film Company for the year 1911, states that the profits for that year were $1,118,220.42. Does that figure include amounts paid out by the General Film Company on these deferred payments? Do you understand my question? A. Yes, I understand the question. No, it does not. Q. Then there should be added to that figure — A. (Interrupting) : At least I don't think it does. I am not familiar with the books for that period, and those figures were taken from the books, and I believe it does not include that item.