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 2
Leaf #:
000422
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:
June 13, 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.

1040 A. J. Clapham, Cross Examination. 1 Q. Did you receive on or about July 5, 1910, a letter from the Motion Picture Patents Company of New York, copy of which I now show you (handing paper to witness)? A. (witness examining paper): I may have received that letter. It is so long back, my recollection is not very clear. Q. Have you produced any letter recently which you have received at that time from the Motion Picture Patents Company? A. Have I produced any letter? Q. Yes. For the Government or anyone else? A. Well, I have not seen anything like that for the last three or 2 four years. I don't know whether I turned a letter like that over to the Government or not. Mr. Kings-ley: I offer it in evidence. The paper offered is marked Defendants' Exhibit No. 21, and is as follows: Defendants' Exhibit No. 21. (Copy.) 8 January 5th, 1910. Mr. A. J. Clapham, Theatre Film Service Co., 76 2nd Street, San Francisco, Cal. Dear Sir: We have reason to believe that either the Theatre Film Service Company or the Western Amusement Supply Comany, which we understand are each controlled by you and 4 operated from the same office, is selling film outright. If this has been done by either concern, we would be pleased to have you report to us at once under what circumstances this was done, and what reasons you have to give therefor. Yours truly, MOTION PICTURE PATENTS COMPANY GFS/JK By X-102