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 000203 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 6
Leaf #:
000203
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
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.

Jeremiah J. Kennedy, Okoss Examination. 3231 exhibitors? A. Yes, but I am including with that, the large income from the sale and rental of posters. Q. Those posters are shipped out in the same way from your branch offices to the exhibitors? A. No. We are one of the sources of supply. There are several other sources; they are supplied by the manufacturers, just the same, and by the lithographers just the same as the General Film Company supplies them. Q. I am talking now about your revenues. The posters that your company sends out are shipped out from your branch offices to the exhibitors? A. Yes. But we do not supply all, and have no control over them. Q. That is to say, the licensed producers ship some posters also? A. Some of the licensed producers ship none. For instance, the Biograpli Company ships none. Q. What per cent, of your total revenue is made up of the leasing of films to the exhibitors? A. No figures have been made up to show that percentage, but I should say it is approximately 90 or 91 per cent. Q. Are these films shipped from the factories of the licensed producers to your branch offices? A. They are delivered by the producers and importers to the transportation companies designated by us at the point of shipment. Our responsibility commences when the producer and importer delivers to the transportation company that we designate, at the point of shipment. Q. Then the transportation company carries them to your branch offices? A. Yes. Q. And from your branch offices they are distributed to these exhibitors? A. Yes. Q. And 90 per cent, of your revenues are derived from this distribution to your exhibitors? A. Yes. Q. Then the exhibitors ship them back to you and you redistribute them to other exhibitors? A. Yes. Q. Are you acquainted with the affairs of the Biograph Company prior to the Summer of 1907? A. No, I did not know of its existence. Q. The by-laws of the Executive Committee of the General Film Company, which appear at Volume I of the Record, page 209, folio 4, provide that the Executive Committee shall keep minutes. Did this Executive Committee preserve any minutes of the occurrences during the Summer of 1910