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 4
Leaf #:
000539
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 21, 2023
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.

William C. Brandon, Direct Examination. 2380 Q. Are they constantly after your customers to get them away from you? A. Continually, yes, sir. Q. Do they succeed in getting many? A. Well, it does not fluctuate at the present time, very much. Most of the towns in that territory are small towns, with two or three theatres, and they seem to like a variety of programs. That is, if we have one house, the other two houses, one of them is liable to use the Universal, and the other the Mutual. Q. And suppose there are three theatres in a town? Is the business divided between the Universal, the Mutual and General? A. Very often. Q. They get about as many customers of yours, on an average, as you do of theirs? A. Yes, sir. I think more. Q. Is their business growing rapidly? A. It has grown rapidly in the last two years. In the last year, rather. Q. To what extent are the General Film customers at your branch, at Atlanta, at liberty to select their own program? A. Well, they are not at liberty to select their own program, unless we have the films open. All of our customers are on a schedule, which we offer them at the time we figure on them for service. When they come in and figure with us for service, we show them what we can give them. If that is satisfactory, they take it; if it is not, we cannot take them. Because of the permanent nature of the schedule. Each reel is at a certain point on a certain day. Q. If a customer comes to you for service, he first indicates to you the character of the service that he wishes? A. Yes, the age of the service. Q. Suppose a customer applies to you for service in a town where you are already supplying a customer; what, if any, efforts do you make to supply the prospective customer with a program which would not conflict or repeat on the program already held by the existing customer? A. We make every effort to avoid repeaters at all times; in fact, we cannot serve any repeaters, because the customers refuse to run them. They all insist on a clear program, changed daily. Q. Do you find that your customers, as a rule, prefer that you shall book them and send a list of their bookings in advance to them? A. They insist upon it. That is the reason we have to have that permanent schedule, because