The Motion Picture Patents Company Versus the Independents

The Motion Picture Patents Company Versus the Independents

The Motion Picture Patent Company

Since 1897, the Edison company 
1) had tried to force its competitors out of business by suing them.
2) Edison claimed to own the basic patents on motion-picture cameras, projectors, and film stock.
3) Some companies, such as Vitagraph, paid Edison a license fee to be able to go on producing.
4) After a court decision went in Edison’s favor in 1904, other companies joined in paying such fees.
5) American Mutoscope & Biograph (AM&B), however, refused to cooperate with Edison,
    since its Biograph camera had a different mechanism and separate patents.

The film market approached chaos.
1) Exhibitors needed a great many films, but producers were so busy fighting each other
    that they could not release enough titles.
2) During this same period, however, Edison and AM&B decided to cooperate.
3)They created a separate company that would control all competitors by owning and charging licensing
   fees on the key existing patents.
4) In December of 1908, the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), headed by Edison and AM&B,
   was created.
5) Several other production companies belonged to the MPPC: Vitagraph, Selig, Essanay, Lubin, and
   Kalem.
6) To keep operating, each of these had to pay fees to the two main companies (though Vitagraph,
    which had contributed a patent to the arrangement, got back a portion of the license fees).

The MPPC hoped to control all three phases of the industry:
1) production,
2) distribution, and
3) exhibition.
4) Only licensed companies could make films.
5) Only licensed distribution firms could release them.
6) And all theaters wanting films made by members of the MPPC had to pay a weekly fee for the
    privilege.
7) Eastman Kodak agreed to sell film stock only to members of the MPPC, and in return they would buy
    no stock except from Kodak.

Still, the MPPC encountered challenges.
1) Not all producers, distributors, and exhibitors were willing to pay fees to Edison and AM&B.
2) Exhibitors who had purchased their projectors outright were particularly annoyed.
3) It is estimated that about 6,000 theaters agreed to pay the weekly fee, but another 2,000 refused.
4)The unlicensed theaters provided a market that unlicensed producers and distributors could serve.
5)This portion of the industry was soon identified as the independents.

In April 1909,
1) the first effective blow against the MPPC was dealt when
2) Carl Laemmle, who ran the largest American distribution firm, turned in his license.
3) He started the Independent Motion Picture (IMP) company, a small firm that would later form
    the basis for the Universal studio.
4)Within the next few years, more than a dozen other independent companies started up across the
    country, including
    a)Thanhouser, Solax (run by Alice Guy Blaché, formerly of Gaumont in France),
    b) and the New York Motion Picture Company (headed by Thomas H. Ince, who would become an
        important producer).
5)Independent theaters could rent films from the European companies shut out of the MPPC
    arrangement.
6) Trying to avoid patent-infringement suits by the MPPC, independent companies claimed to be using
     cameras that employed different mechanisms.

Responding to the independent movement,
1) the MPPC created the General Film Company in 1910
    as an attempt to monopolize distribution.
2) The General Film Company was to release all the films made by MPPC producers.
3) The MPPC also hired detectives to gain evidence that producers were using cameras
    with the Latham loop and other devices patented by the MPPC.
4) Between 1909 and 1911, the MPPC brought lawsuits against nearly all of the independent producers
    for using patent-infringing cameras.
5)One such suit, against Laemmle’s IMP, was based on the Latham-loop patent.
6) In 1912, the courts ruled against the MPPC, on the grounds that the technique of the Latham loop had
   been anticipated in earlier patents.
7) Consequently, independent companies could use any camera without fearing litigation.
8)This court decision was a severe blow to the MPPC.

A concerned group of New York citizens formed the Board of Censorship in March 1909.
1)This was a private body aimed at improving the movies and thus forestalling
    the federal government from passing a national censorship law.
2)Producers were to submit films voluntarily, and films that passed could include a notice of approval.
3)As a way of gaining respectability, MPPC members allowed their films to be examined, and they even
   supported the board financially.
4)This cooperation led the group to change its name to the National Board of Censorship
   (and, in 1915, to the National Board of Review).
5)Although censorship boards continued to be formed on the municipal and state levels, no national
    censorship law was—or ever has been—passed.

Both the MPPC and the independents
1) also tried to improve the public image of the movies by releasing more prestigious films
    that would appeal to middle- and upper-class spectators.
2) Films became longer and more complex in their narratives.
3) Stories derived from celebrated literature or portraying important historical events counter-balanced
   the popular slapstick chases and crime films.
4) Some of these prestigious films, such as The Assassination of the Duc de Guise, came from abroad. 

Along with this effort to appeal to refined audiences
1) came a change in the places where films were shown.
2) Some nickelodeons continued to operate well into the 1910s,
3) but from 1908 on, exhibitors also began to build or convert larger theaters for showing films.
4)These establishments might charge ten or twenty-five cents, or even more, for longer programs.
5) Some theaters combined films and live vaudeville acts.
6) Popular song slides,
side note: "I discovered several texts that gave instructions to the pianist to go have a smoke while the film was on the screen but to come back for the song slides," he said. And old newspaper ads and photos of the fronts of the theaters showed that the owners advertised the songs, not the films.
He plays the piano, he sings the songs, he leads the audience in singalongs, he talks about the nickelodeon era and he does a bit of schmoozing and joking with the audience."
"That's the genius of the whole system," Altman said. "Music publishers paid to have the song slides shown. They were the ads for this week's pop song."
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 which were perceived as lower class, gradually disappeared as the better-class
    theaters began to use two projectors—and hence had no need for a song to cover the change of reels.
7) Musical accompaniment by orchestras or pipe organs, ornate decorations, and occasional educational
   lectures accompanying the films were all designed to create an atmosphere very different from that of
   the nickel movie houses.

Oligopoly
1)This arrangement set the stage for control over the entire US film market by an oligopoly.
2) When one company dominates its market, that firm has a monopoly.
3)  In an oligopoly, a small number of firms cooperate to control the market and block the entry of new
     companies.
4) Members of the MPPC’s oligopoly tried to eliminate all other firms by threatening to sue for patent
   infringement.
5) A producer who used a film camera without paying the MPPC risked being taken to court.
6) The same was true for exhibitors, since the MPPC claimed to control the patents covering their
     projectors.
7) By and large, American film production and distribution remain an oligopoly.