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Since 1891, when [Thomas Edison] filed his first patent on a motion picture camera/film system, his lawyers had launched 23 aggressive infringement suits against other production outfits.
Sometimes Edison won. Sometimes he lost. But the costs of these battles overwhelmed his rivals, and that was the intent.
“The expense of these suits would have financially ruined any inventor who did not have the large resources of Edison,” one of his lawyers boasted, “and it could hardly be expected that he would be able to prosecute simultaneously every infringement as it arose.”
Thus his victims sold their patents, making the Edison movie empire ever larger.
Thomas Edison’s plot to hijack the movie industry (via lkm)
Same as it ever was…
