United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34, was a landmark American antitrust law case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java.
Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film and television production and distribution company and the namesake subsidiary of Paramount Global. It is the sixth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States, and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.
Adolph Zukor was a Hungarian-American film producer best known as one of the three founders of Paramount Pictures. He produced one of America's first feature-length films, The Prisoner of Zenda, in 1913.
Loews Cineplex Entertainment, also known as Loews Incorporated, was an American theater chain operating in North America.
The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios along with some independent films, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century.
A consent decree is an agreement or settlement that resolves a dispute between two parties without admission of guilt or liability. Most often it is such a type of settlement in the United States. The plaintiff and the defendant ask the court to enter into their agreement, and the court maintains supervision over the implementation of the decree in monetary exchanges or restructured interactions between parties. It is similar to and sometimes referred to as an antitrust decree, stipulated judgment, or consent judgment. Consent decrees are frequently used by federal courts to ensure that businesses and industries adhere to regulatory laws in areas such as antitrust law, employment discrimination, and environmental regulation.
The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatres would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which the presentation of one feature film would be followed by various short subject reels.
El Capitan Theatre is a fully restored movie palace at 6838 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, United States. The theater and adjacent Hollywood Masonic Temple are owned by The Walt Disney Company and serve as the venue for a majority of the Walt Disney Studios' film premieres.
Cinemark Holdings, Inc. is an American movie theater chain that started operations in 1984 and since then it has operated theaters with hundreds of locations throughout the Americas. It is headquartered in Plano, Texas, in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Cinemark is a leader in the theatrical exhibition industry with 521 theaters and 5,855 screens in the U.S. and Latin America as of June 30, 2022. It is also the largest movie theatre chain in Brazil, with a 30 percent market share.
Leonard H. Goldenson was the founder and president of the United States-based television network American Broadcasting Company (ABC), from 1953 to 1986. Goldenson, as CEO of United Paramount Theatres, acquired a then-struggling ABC from candy industrialist Edward J. Noble. Goldenson focused on investing heavily on sports and news coverage along with creating synergy between Hollywood studios and television networks. Goldenson turned ABC into a media conglomerate, owning television and radio stations along with newspapers and book publishers.
A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the early years of the Golden Age of Hollywood from 1927 to 1948, wherein studios produced films primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under often long-term contract, and dominated exhibition through vertical integration, i.e., the ownership or effective control of distributors and exhibition, guaranteeing additional sales of films through manipulative booking techniques such as block booking.
The Famous Players–Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company – originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays – and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.
Block booking is a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit. Block booking was the prevailing practice in the Hollywood studio system from the turn of the 1930s until it was outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948). Under block booking, "independent ('unaffiliated') theater owners were forced to take large numbers of a studio's pictures without knowing much about them. Those studios could then parcel out B movies along with A-class features and star vehicles, which made both production and distribution operations more economical." The element of the system involving the purchase of unseen pictures is known as blind bidding.
Plitt Theatres was a major movie theater chain in the United States and went under a number of names, Publix Theaters Corporation, Paramount Publix Corporation, United Paramount Theatres, American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres and ABC Theatres and operated a number of theater circuits under various names.
National General Corporation (NGC) was a theater chain holding company, film distribution and production company and was considered one of the "instant majors". It was in operation from 1951 to 1974.
Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 327 U.S. 251 (1946), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court allowing an action to recover compensatory damages under the antitrust statutes. The jury had returned a verdict for $120,000 in petitioner's favor, covering a five-year period where plaintiff suffered due to respondents' antitrust conspiracy. The trial court, sitting in the Northern District of Illinois, gave judgment for treble damages, as prescribed by § 4 of the Clayton Act. The 7th Circuit reversed on the sole ground that the evidence of damage was not sufficient for submission to the jury, and directed the entry of judgment for respondents non obstante veredicto. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether the evidence of damage was sufficient to support the verdict. Respondents argued that any measure of damages would be too speculative and uncertain to afford an accurate measure of the amount of the damage. The Supreme Court disagreed, not wanting to let the respondent defeat a remedy because its antitrust violation was so effective and complete. The Court held that the jury could return a verdict for the plaintiffs, even though damages could not be measured with the exactness which would otherwise have been possible, so long as the jury made a "just and reasonable estimate of the damage based on relevant data". The judgment of the district court was affirmed and the judgment of the court of appeals was reversed.
Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. United States, 306 U.S. 208 (1939), is a 1939 decision of the United States Supreme Court finding an antitrust price-fixing conspiracy based on what subsequently came to be known a hub-and-spoke conspiracy theory.
Henry G. Plitt was an American businessman and war hero who founded Plitt Theatres.
An independent movie theater or indie cinema is a movie theater which screens independent, art house, foreign, or other non-mainstream films. It can be contrasted with a mainstream theater, which is more likely to screen blockbusters and other popular films.
United States, et al. v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, LLC is an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C., against entertainment company Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary Ticketmaster, following the Taylor Swift–Ticketmaster controversy in 2022.
