A collection of news and information pertaining to silent era films. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Silent Era Litigation
Information on some of the many patent infringement suits tried during the silent era.

Edison Company vs.
American Mutoscope & Biograph Company
(190?-1907)

Edison vs. American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. / The litigation which has been, going on for some years against the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, under the Edison moving picture camera patent, was brought to a close, March 6, by a decision of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. / The Court, in an exhaustive opinion, finds that the Mutoscope Company’s biograph camera, which is the camera principally used by that company in its business and covered by patents owned and controlled by it, is not the “type of apparatus described and shown in the Edison patents involved in this suit and is not an infringement”; but that all other commercial forms of camera now in use embodying the sprocket movement engaging with a perforated film are within the scope of the Edison patent. / The effect of this decision, which is final, leaves the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company undisturbed in its right to use its own form of camera, which is fully protected by its patents and is the only practical form of camera described by the Court to be outside the Edison patent, so that the business of manufacturing moving picture films will, as the result of this litigation, be confined to the American Mutoscope and Biograph and the Edison companies. [MovPicWorld-19070309 p. 4]