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)

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 #:
000160
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.

2610 Harry W. Sohbrer, Direct Examination. Q. How much earlier? A. We run now from a week to about 28 days. Q. What did you run before? A. I think it was about ten days to thirty clays — to 45 days. Q. Has the price of motion picture service to you been increased since you began taking service from the General Film Company? A. Only when I made changes to better service. Q. Is the price at present, when you consider the earlier age of the releases and the increased number of motion pictures, any higher than it was when you were takingservice from the Pittsburgh Calcium Light Company? A. I should think that it would be about the same. Q. Are there any independent houses in Johnstown? A. Two. Q. How many licensed houses are there? A. Five. SSix including the vaudeville that runs the licensed pictures. Q. Is the Vaudeville Theatre one which gives most of its entertainment as vaudeville? A. As vaudeville. Three moving picture theatres give licensed pictures. Q. How long have the two unlicensed houses been running in Johnstown as independent? A. At least three years. Q. Do you know the seating capacity of each? A. Approximately I would say, one has 600, the other about 250. Q. What do you say as to whether the quality of licensed pictures has improved or deteriorated since you have been exhibiting them? A. Greatly improved. Q. Are you solicited by the independent manufacturers or exchanges, from time to time, to change your service? A. Only by agents of certain feature pictures. Q. Do you run any feature pictures? A. That is, outside of the licensed? Q. Yes. A. Just the past two weeks I have. Q. Did you make any special arrangement to run these? A. Simply wrote them that I was going to put in the two pictures each Wednesday and Thursday. Q. How long did you exhibit them? A. Two days each. Q. Did you make any change in prices? A. Yes, sir; I raised my prices. Q. Did you do a good business while you were showing these pictures? A. Yes. A good business.