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 #:
000562
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.

3414 Gov't Ex. 277, Decision on Latham Patent. that it is possible to accomplish this end by means of photography." The complainant's expert, Mr. Waterman, asserts, and I see no reason to differ from him, that the apparatus here described can be used equally well for taking pictures and projecting them. It comprises a supply and a take-up reel with an escapement between them having a sprocket Avheel engaging the holes perforated at regular intervals on the two edges of the film to feed it along intermittently across an exposure opening. There is not, however, the distinguishing characteristic of the Latham patent, the second feeding mechanism which continuously maintains a loop and relieves the pressure on the intermittently feeding sprocket. Thomas Armat testifies that the Edison Company began to put out projecting machines in the fall of 189G or the spring of 1897. He says: "These last mentioned machines, however, at this date did not at first embody the feature of providing slack between the supporting reel and the intermittently moving device, and they had a very short life as thus put on the market." The problem I am now considering was solved, not by Edison, but by Latham. The patents to Marcy, though prior in time, do not disclose the Latham invention. The film is pinched between two rollers and is advanced by the revolving of the larger roller, at a uniform rate. There are no sprocket wheels and no holes in the edges of the film to engage such sprockets, the film is moved by friction and therefore lacks the uniform and definite action of the Latham device. The Chinnock camera, assuming it to have been completed and operative prior to the Latham invention, which proposition is disputed and in doubt, does not anticipate for reasons similar to those just above stated regarding the Marcy camera. The film is advanced by continuously driven friction rolls, and is arrested and released by a clamp intermittently operated. There is also a pair of friction rolls below the exposure opening; they are of a