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 #:
000529
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 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.

Walter W. R. Gkeem:, Direct Examination. 2075 Motion Picture Patents Company? A. Why, the checking up of the theatres in New York City. Q. What work did you do in the way of checking up theatres, what was the process? A. Why, I had buff slips and each one had a name of a different theatre in New York City, or Newark, New Jersey, or Jersey City, as the case may be, and I went around and investigated them to see whether they were active or closed, and I added theatres on the list that were not on the records of the Patents Company. Q. Did you in December, 1913, go to Georgia by direction of the Motion Picture Patents Company, and personally visit a number of towns and villages to get an accurate lisl of motion picture theatres? A. Yes. Q. How many towns did you personally visit at that time? A. Oh, there were sixty-four towns with theatres that I visited, and I didn't keep the record of towns without theatres that I visited. The total number was one hundred and twenty-two towns visited. Q. How many towns did you check up either by personal visit or telephone communication? A. One hundred and sixty-six I investigated. Q. What was the total number of motion picture theatres you found in the territory covered either by personal visit or by telephone communication? A. One hundred and three theatres, active. Q. What do you mean by "active theatres?" A. Why, a theatre that is showing, or any place, as the case may be, that is showing or exhibiting pictures at least one day a week. Q. I show you a map of the State of Georgia, in which a large section within the State boundaries is enclosed by black dotted lines. Were the towns you visited and the theatres you checked located in the area bounded by the dotted line? A. All the territory was checked within that line. Mr. Grosvenor: Did you go to all towns in that territory? The Witness : No, I telephoned or went to every town over four hundred within that territory to find out if there was a picture show.