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 #:
000550
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.

528 William H. Swanson, Cross Examination. Q. All that you did purchase or lease during the month of December were from one or more of the manufacturers licensed by the Edison Manufacturing Company? A. I don't recall having leased any in the month of December at all. Q. Did you buy any? A. Oh, yes, sir. Unquestionably. Q. And only from those licensees? A. That is all. Q. How many customers would one reel serve during a week? A. I want to get, if I can, the relative percentage of the customers to a given quantity of reels. A. That, Mr. Willis, no one has ever been able to determine, and the reasons or the conditions are so different in every individual case where film exchanges are located or parties film is rented to, or the requirements of the place. Some men want to rent a reel for one week, some for one day, some for two days. Q. I am not asking you with reference to any general custom. I am asking you with reference to the conduct of your own business. Isn't it a fair estimate to say that one reel will serve four customers? A. In one week? Q. Yes? A. No. It would not with me, because my business was mostly a mail order business. It was altogether different from the way it is in New York, where they hand it out over the counter. Q. Suppose you had a hundred customers a week, how many reels would you have to have? A. Oh, I have had a hundred and two hundred customers, and not buy any reels. Q. I want to get this. How many reels would be necessary to supply a hundred customers? A. Well, I found that it requires about three thousand. Q. To supply — A. (Interrupting) : One hundred customers, yes, sir. Q. Isn't it a fact that you could run your business and supply the demand of a hundred customers a week with four reels? A. Four reels of film? Q. Yes? A. Certainly not. How are you going to distribute four reels of film among a hundred customers? Q. What I mean is, that the average is four for each reel? A. I am afraid if you divided a reel into four pieces and sent a portion to each customer, you would soon lose your customers.