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 #:
000561
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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Gov't Ex. 277, Decision ox Latham Patext. 3413 in order to reach a conclusion that some one other than Latham conceived the invention. If Latham conceived it, the fact that he employed others to embody his idea in a working machine does not deprive him, and his assigns, of the fruits of the invention. Of course the process of taking and projecting pictures varies in several details, many of which are pointed out in the defendant's brief, but I do not deem it necessary to consider them at length, in view of the controlling circumstance that the machine, the physical thing, is capable of taking and projecting pictures. The picture-bearing strip might as well have been described as "a strip designed for bearing pictures"; it is the same strip in either case. When used as a camera the pictures are impressed upon the strip during the passage through, when used as a projector the same pictures, on the same strip, are passed through in the same manner. It would seem to be an exceedingly harsh doctrine to hold that when one has invented a complicated and delicately organized machine, consisting of a combination of reels, drums, pulleys and sprockets, designed to manipulate the film; invention and infringement must depend upon the color or length of the film. The combination is the same whether the film is impressed with the pictures while passing through, or whether the same film with the pictures completed is passed through. If the camera of February 2Gth did not embody the invention in issue, nothing could do so, it was the invention in issue. The Edison patent No. 493,420 shows a continuously moving film with no intermittent motion. The Edison patent No. 589,168 is for a "Kinetographic Camera." He says: "The purpose I have in view is to produce pictures representing objects in motion throughout an extended period of time which may be utilized to exhibit the scene including such moving objects in a perfect and natural manner by means of a suitable exhibiting apparatus, such as that described in an application filed simultaneously herewith (Patent No. 493,420, dated March 14, 1893). I have found