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 000112 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 2
Leaf #:
000112
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.

30 Louis Rosenbluh, Redirect Examination. know? A. I don't know the name. Price and something is the name. Price will answer for one of the names. Then there was the Mcoland Theatre. That is where the film was being supplied by the General Film Company. Mr. Caldwell : That is all. Redirect examination by Mr. Grosvenor: Q. Mr. Rosenbluh, you have testified on cross examination that you have on hand about 3,000 reels? A. Yes, sir. Q. Take your large customers. How many reels a week will they take, apiece, I mean? A. About 48 reels. Q. That is to say, a customer who has a good-sized theatre will take from you 48 reels a week? A. Yes, sir. Q. Now, how many customers do you have? About 150, I believe you testified. A. 150. Q. And the smaller theatres, how many will they take a week? A. About 42. Some 35. Those who show only six days, they use about 30 or 36. Q. Of those 3,000 reels that you have on hand, how many are necessary for supplying these 150 customers from day to day? That is to say, how many of them are in daily use or subject to call? A. About 800, I should judge, are in use, and there is a few of them in transit that are not being used, ready to be supplied to the theatres for the next day's use. Q. Then that leaves about 2,000 that you are able to keep as permanent reels? A. Well, we use those as reserve to make changes. Of course, all people do not use the same age of film. Where an exhibitor is located in a certain section, he realizes that he has to take some of the reels that have been shown previously in that vicinity, and he likes to take those as far back as he possibly can, so that the public may have forgotten them to an extent, as having seen them possibly in the immediate vicinity, so that they take about three reels new goods, and two or three reels of the old goods, and we continue to use these older films to fill in that way. Q. At the end of each month you return to the manufacturers as many reels of film as you have purchased during the seventh preceding month? A. Yes, sir. Q. Then the number of the reels that you have on hand is not allowed to increase from month to month, is it? A. It cannot increase.