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 6
Leaf #:
000560
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
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3412 Gov't Ex. 277, Decision ox Latham Patent. was put into practical operation on that date, as a camera, its use as a projector having been also demonstrated. The complaint admits that the invention of Latham was shortly after February 26, 1895, "invented independently in France by M. J. H. Joly, who used it both in cameras and projectors, and still later in the year 1895, in this country, by Thomas Armat, who used it exclusively in projecting machines." This admission undoubtedly anticipates the filing date of June 1, 1896, and throws upon the complainant the burden of establishing the date of the invention at a period anterior to the dates of the Joly and Armat structures. This has been done. I do not deem it necessary to discuss the testimony in detail because it fully establishes the fact of the completion and reduction to practice by Latham, on the evening of February 26 or the morning of February 27, 1895. The defendant took no evidence on this issue. It is asserted that the evidence is insufficient because the device relied on was not a projector, but a camera. I have already shown that the two devices were used interchangeably and, where it appears that the inventor was the first to make the precise structure which he now claims, it is not material what he called it or how he first used it in the moving picture art. He was entitled to any use to which it might be legitimately put in that art. The testimony does not bear out the defendant's other contentions that the adaptation and use of the device as a projector is not satisfactorily established, that it was an abandoned experiment and was not the work of Latham, but of his mechanic, Eugene Lauste. The conception was Latham's, worked out and made operative by skilled mechanics employed by him. Latham says: "When the idea came into my head * * * it was necessary for me to get the help of skilled mechanics." It would be necessary to ignore arbitrarily the testimony