The Edison Movie Monopoly

• December 1908
•  motion picture inventors and industry leaders organized the first great film trust
•  Motion Picture Patents Company
• bring stability to the chaotic early film years characterized by patent wars and litigation
• ended their competitive feuding in favor of a cooperative system that provided industry domination
• pooling their interests, the member companies legally monopolized the business, and demanded licensing fees from all film producers, distributors, and exhibitors.
• January 1909 deadline was set for all companies to comply with the license
• By February, unlicensed outlaws, who referred to themselves as independents protested the trust and carried on business without submitting to the Edison monopoly. 
• summer of 1909 the independent movement was in full-swing
• with producers and theater owners using illegal equipment and imported film stock to create their own underground market.
• tremendous expansion in the number of nickelodeons, the Patents Company reacted to the independent movement by forming a strong-arm subsidiary known as the General Film Company to block the entry of non-licensed independents. 
• With coercive tactics that have become legendary, General Film confiscated unlicensed equipment, discontinued product supply to theaters which showed unlicensed films, and effectively monopolized distribution with the acquisition of all U.S. film exchanges, 
• except for the one owned by the independent William Fox who defied the Trust even after his license was revoked.
• early independents were resilient film exhibitors who ventured into production when they found their supply of film threatened. 
• Carl Laemmle (Independent Motion Picture Company or IMP), Harry E. Aitken (Majestic Films), and Adolph Zukor (Famous Players) were among the pioneering independents who protested the Trust, and then laid the foundation for the Hollywood studios. 
• Having entered the business through exhibition, they determined that they liked production better, and got out of the theater business 
• nickelodeon boom ended around 1911.
• independent outlaws flourished, the Motion Picture Patents Company was also hit with antitrust charges by the United States government
• October 1915 courts determined that the Patents Company and its General Film division acted as a monopoly in restraint of trade, and later ordered it disintegrated
• by the time the decision was handed down, the independents had already outmaneuvered the Trust. 
• The Edison monopoly had taken a retrogressive stance to the innovative industry reforms introduced by the outlaws.