MPPC

MPPC stands for Motion Picture Patents Company, also known as the Edison Trust, also known as the First Oligopoly. It was a trust of all the major film companies (Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, Kalem, American Star, American Pathé), the leading distributor (George Kleine) and the biggest supplier of raw film, Eastman Kodak. The reason for it's decline are manifold. The most important ones are the misjudgement of consumer interest and the quick rise of the so-called Independents, who later became the Second Oligopoly. There were also US Supreme Court decisions, in particular the one in 1912, which cancelled the patent on raw film, the one in 1915, which cancelled all MPPC patents and the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1917, which ended the oligopoly, but at that time, the MPPC was already defeated.