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 000570 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 3
Leaf #:
000570
Language:
English
Collection:
Early Cinema and Government & Law
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.

1796 Jonas A. Koerpel, Direct Examination. not got in yet, or has missed his train, or something, and then it is necessary to change a reel. Q. You say that a certain number of motion pictures are scheduled on your program? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know what they are going to be? A. Yes, sir. Q. How do you know that? A. Well, they agree to give me an Edison reel, when it is a certain number of days old, or a Yitagraph, when it is a certain number of days old, and so on. In other Words, I now have Pathe's Weekly every Saturday. That is Pathe's release of Monday of the same week, and that I have as sure as the Lord made green apples, every Saturday, unless it burns up, or something like that, but I have never missed it once, and my audiences know every Saturday that they will see Pathe's Weekly. Q. Do you know, yourself, what the title and description of the pictures are that are scheduled? A. Yes, sir. Q. And how? A. The General Film Company gives us books with the release numbers in them, and the date of the release, the name of the subject, and the manufacturer, and whether it is a comedy or a drama. Q. And can you get the story from the manufacturers' description? A. All of the manufacturers, separately, send us bulletins, and all the manufacturers are advertising their films. Now, when Selig, for example, gets ready to release a Western Special, or some other special, about one week before, they send out a lot of advertising matter, giving a synopsis of the story, and sample heralds can be bought for so much per thousand, urging you to book it at your exchange, whatever branch it may be, of the General Film Exchange. Q. Are the manufacturers constantly sending you circular letters and pamphlets? A. Yes, sir, in every mail every day we get slews of them. Q. From the licensed manufacturers? A. Yes, sir. O. You speak of heralds. What are heralds? A. They are a well-gotten up sort of a circular that is folded, or folds, and contains a synopsis of the story, and the cast, the actors and the actresses and scenes, and which are not just merely drawn, but stills made from cuts, photographs of some situation in the story. Q. Would you rather say "still photographs" or pictures there, instead of "stills"? A. Yes, sir. I mean that when thev are making the pictures, and there is a good