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 000505 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 #:
000505
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.

Hector J. Streyckmans, Cross Examination. 1123 By Mr. Kingsley : Q. Are they located throughout the country generally? A. Yes, sir, and Canada. Q. How many manufacturers supplied films to the Mutual? A. About twelve. Q, And what are the names of some of those manufacturers? A. American, Bronco — the Bucking Horse Film, Kay-bee, Keystone, Reliance, Majestic, Thanhauser. Let me see if I have got them all. Pilot, Solax, Gaumont, Lux, Eclair; that is all. Q. What is the full name of the company we have been discussing as the "Mutual"? A. Mutual Film Corporation. Q. Does the Mutual Film Corporation handle the product of these manufacturers exclusively? A. Some of them. Q. How many of them? A. American, Kay-bee, Keystone, Bronco, Reliance, Majestic, and Thanhauser; that is seven. Q. Do you mean to state that the Mutual Film Corporation handles the entire product of the seven companies you have named? A. It does. Q. Does the Mutual Film Corporation own these companies which supply their entire product to it? A. It does not. Q. Does it have contracts with them for the supplying of these films? A. Yes, sir. Q. Now, the Mutual Film Corporation has. you think, about fifty branch offices located in this country? A. Yes, sir. Q. And were those branch offices established by the Mutual Film Corporation, or did the Mutual Film Corporation buy a large percentage of them? A. Some of them were bought by the Mutual, and the balance were established. Q. And how many would you say were bought by the Mutual? A. Quite a large number of them. Q. Well, how many would yon say? A. Well, they bought the Gaumont Company in Canada, six offices; and they bought the Empire and the Great Eastern, and the Metropolitan, and the Peerless, in New York City, and the Eastern in New York City and the Western Film Exchange in Milwaukee, and Kansas City; probably bought eighteen or nineteen offices.