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 00063 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 #:
00063
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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Petitioner's Exhibit No. 203. 2513 tion involved invention, as distingui&licd from ordinary mechanical skill. If it is new only in the sense that it embodies and represents superior workmanship, or is an improvement upon an old article in degree and excellence, within all authorities the claim is invalid. * * * * Length of Film Xot Defined. "'By the terms of the claim the length of the film is not defined, nor is the number of photographs wJvich it is to represent defined. It is to be an unbroken, transparent or translucent, tape-like photographic film; it is to have thereon equi-distant photographs of successive positions of an object in motion; these photographs are to be arranged in a continuous, straight-line sequence, and the number of them is not limited, save by the length of the film. The film was not new, and if the other characteristics of the product are not new, or are new only in the sense that they add to the article merely a superiority of finish, or a greater accuracy of detail, the claim is destitute of patentable novelty. "'In view of these proceedings, and the acquiescence of the patentee in the limitations imposed upon the claim by the patent office, its novelty depends mainly upon the length of the film. This feature of the claim is satisfied by any film which is long enough to carry a sufficient number of successive pictures to reproduce, when properly used, some definite cycle of movements to convey the impression of reality to the observer. A film having this characteristic was not new, in the sense that its production involved invention. The Du Cos (patented in 1864) apparatus teas capable of taking the requisite number of pictures in series suitable for using in an exhibiting apparatus. Prof. Morton, the expert for the complainant (Edison) in his testimony, conceded that a series of photograplis of an object in motion could have been taken upon a paper strip by the camera of the certificate of addition of the Du Cos patent, and these negatives might have been transferred to a translucent paper strip, as a series of positives and that it would require no invention, in view of the instructions which Du Cos gives as to doing this, to prepare such a strip of paper with a series of pictures upon it. He differentiates the film of the claim from the film which