Nope, not an urban legend. The exploits of the Motion Picture Patents Company (formerly the Edison trust) are well-documented.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Thomas Edison owned nearly every motion picture camera patent in America. His MPPC “licensed” seven or eight companies to use his cameras. Everyone else was shut out. And they had courts on their side. Hired MPPC thugs would go to shoots of independent producers and break stuff and rough people up. Some producers/camera operators resorted to building false camera housings from wood and pasteboard to disguise equipment.
So the independents fled to California, as far from the goon squads as possible. They were aided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which had jurisdiction, but which for some reason didn’t enforce the East Coast court patent rulings.
Certainly it was providential that California had good weather for outdoor shooting, and varied topography that could stand in for anyplace in the word, which made California a better locale than New Jersey... but that was a happy coincidence.
The founders of Hollywood were fleeing the Edison patent police.
So the Ninth Circus was screwing up Federal law even back then? :)
The founders of Hollywood were fleeing the Edison patent police.
Was pondering the other day Adam Smith's admonition that Monopolies should be discouraged, and then thinking further "what is a patent but a government enforced monopoly"?
Yeah, i've read that Edison was a pretty cut throat businessman and what you say sounds consistent with other things i've read about him.