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 #:
000437
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.

A. J. Clapham, Cross Examination. 1055 Defendants' Exhibit No. 28. THEATRE FILM SERVICE CO. (Incorporated) 76 and 78 Second Street (Part of letterhead omitted.) San Francisco, 1/8/10. Motion Picture Patents Co., 80 Fifth Ave., New York City. Gentlemen : We would like to call your attention to the matter of returning old films and would state that it has been our experience that at least 25% of a film is lost during the seven months of its lease, and in many instances it has been even greater than this and we have figured that we are returning about three reels for every two which we lease, and it strikes us particularly hard in view of the fact that we have no old stock on hand other than that which is being constantly used and furthermore the fact that this exchange is one of the latest arrivals in the field has not accumulated any junk, and to withdraw good reels from our service, foot for foot, with no allowance for the loss of film occasioned by repair work, works a hardship on us. We respectfully draw this matter to your attention and would suggest that a 25% allowance, would, in our estimation, be a very reasonable allowance in the return of this old film. We trust to hear from you along these lines. Yours very truly, THEATRE FILM SERVICE CO., AJC per A. J. Clapham (S) Rubber stamp: Received Jan. 14, 1910. Ansd. None F. H. AJC