The Patent Wars.
Or: how a cartel in New Jersey accidentally invented Hollywood.
Every American movie is made where it is because of a lawsuit. Between 1897 and 1915, Thomas Edison tried to monopolize the film industry through patent enforcement. The filmmakers who refused to comply drove west until the sheriff couldn't follow. Biograph was in the middle of all of it — first as Edison's rival, then as his reluctant partner, finally as the studio that showed the industry where to move.
The Case File · 1897 – 1916
- 1897
Edison sues everyone
Thomas Edison begins filing patent-infringement lawsuits against every camera, projector and film manufacturer in the United States. Biograph — with its unique 68mm camera design — is one of the few outfits with a legal defense.
- 1902
Biograph wins in court
In Edison v. American Mutoscope, the federal court rules Biograph's camera does NOT infringe Edison's patents. Biograph becomes the only major American producer legally free of the Wizard of Menlo Park.
- 1908
The Edison Trust forms
Unable to beat Biograph in court, Edison invites it into a cartel. Ten companies — including Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig and Lubin — pool their patents and control the American film industry as the Motion Picture Patents Company. Anyone outside the Trust is threatened with lawsuits.
- 1909
The independents fight back
Producers who refuse to join — Carl Laemmle, William Fox, Adolph Zukor — begin quietly moving operations as far from New Jersey process servers as they can get: Southern California. Cheap land, year-round sun, and a short drive to the Mexican border if the Trust's enforcers show up.
- 1910
Griffith heads west
In January, Biograph sends D. W. Griffith and his stock company — Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Henry Walthall — to Los Angeles for winter shooting. They shoot In Old California in a village called Hollywood. It is the first film ever made there.
- 1912
The exodus becomes an industry
The independents have set down roots. Universal, Fox, Paramount and dozens of smaller outfits are building permanent studios in and around Hollywood. What began as a legal escape route has become an industry town.
- 1915
The Trust is broken
In United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co., the federal court rules the Trust an illegal monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Trust is dissolved. But by now the industry has already moved — the cartel wins the court fight and loses the geography.
- 1916
New York goes dark
Biograph, unable to compete with the west-coast feature studios it helped seed, ceases production. The Bronx studio closes. The Manhattan glass stage is dismantled. The industry it created keeps going — three thousand miles away.
Why Hollywood is Hollywood.
The story usually told is that filmmakers moved west for the weather. They did. But they also moved west to get away from a cartel with a Pinkerton budget.
Biograph didn't just make the first film shot in Hollywood. It made the first film shot in Hollywood at a scale big enough to prove it could be done there. The Griffith unit's 1910 California trip is why the studios that came after knew where to build.
The Trust won every early court case and lost the industry anyway. That is the first great business lesson American cinema ever taught itself: you can own the patents and still lose the country.
A hundred and fifteen years later, Biograph is producing again — and once more, the studio doesn't need the cartel's permission.