Allege Conspiracy By Film Interests To Hold Up Television

Northern Advocate, 20 December 1945, Page 5

Allege Conspiracy By Film Interests To Hold Up Television

NEW YORK, Dec. 19,

To prevent television competition with moving pictures, American film interests gained control of advanced British patents and conspired to prevent their use in the Western Hemisphere. This charge' is made by the United States Attorney-General (Mr Clark) in a complaint under the anti-trust law filed in the Federal Court. The defendants include Paramount Pictui'es Corporation, its subsidiary the Television Productions Corporation, the General Precision Equipment Corporation- (allegedly the largest, stockholder in the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation), the Scophony Corporation of America (allegedly organised by the Television Productions and General Precision Corporations in furtherance of the conspiracy), and Scophony, Ltd., the British firm which, owned the basic patents. BRITISH INVENTIONS The complaint declared the conspiracy forestalled the manufacture and development of improved British equipment in the United States for more than three yeai's. The complaint related that Scophony Ltd. developed two new ideas in 1937 and 1939 —the supersonic and skiatron systems used during the eight months prior to the outbreak of the war in televising prize-fights ana horse races from London. The systems reproduced images 24in. by 20in. in home receivers, compared with the American images of 6in. by Bin. The skiatron valve later became the basis for the development of radar.

The war halted further development of ’the systems in England, and Scophony Ltd. sought to transfer experimentation to - the United States.

The Fai’amount and Twentieth Cen-tury-Fox Corporations expressed willingness to furnish the ttecessary capital provided they would not be obliged to make Scophony inventions available to their competitors. CARTEL AGREEMENT As a result, Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fox formed the Scophony Corporation of America in 1942, which received all the patent rights for the Western Hemisphere, and Scophony Ltd., in a cartel agreement, retained the exclusive manufacturing and sales rights in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The complaint added that the directors of the Scophony Corporation representing the Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fcx subsidiaries failed to attend the directors’ meetings .effectively preventing the corporation from doing business, and thfis suppressing the manufacture for sale of equipment and preventing competitors “from employing essential advances in the art of television.” The Government is seeking an Injunction to restrain the defendants from carrying out the existing relationships and to free the patents generally.