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 (1914)

Page scan 00062 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:
1914
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 5
Leaf #:
00062
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
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2512 Petitioner's Exhibit No. 263. been fought through the courts, although I have been informed that suits having been brought from time to time against Pathe Freres, the Vitagraph Company of America, and possibly others unknown to me. They were never adjudicated nor brought to a conclusion. "The question that arises, therefore, which is of greatest interest to film buyers and users, is, what is the possibility of the courts declaring the validity of the Edison film patents? "I consider the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals, referred to above, of March 10, 1902, as a precedent of the greatest value in enabling us to reach a conclusion as to the probable action of the court when this matter comes before it. Extracts from Decision. "That decision commented upon the film claims as follows : " 'It is obvious that Mr. Edison teas not a pioneer, in the large sense of the term, or in the more limited sense in which he icoald have been if he had also invented the film. He was not the irwentor of the film. He was not the first inventor of apparatus capable of producing suitable negatives, taken from practically a single point of view, in single-line sequence, upon a film like his, and embodying the same general means of rotating drums and shutters for bringing the sensitized surface across the lens, and exposing successive portions of it in rapid succession.' "The court then says regarding original claim No. 5: " 'The fifth claim of the patent is obviously an attempt by the patentee to obtain a monopoly of the product of the apparatus described in the patent, so that in the event it should turn out that his apparatus was not patentable, or the product could be made by apparatus not infringing his, he could nevertheless enjoy the exclusive right of making it. A claim for an article of manufacture is not invalid merely because the article is the product of a machine, whether the machine is patented or unpatented; bid it is invalid unless the article is new in a patentable sense, — that is, unless its original conception or produc