Hollywood is globally recognized as the movie capital of the world. Yet it wasn’t always so.

The movie industry was originally based in New York in the 1800s, which was close to New Jersey – and New Jersey was where patent-master Thomas Edison was based.

Edison had patents on over 1,000 different things, including most of the technology needed to make high-end movies, and boy did he flex on them patents.

In short, if you wanted to be in the movie business, you basically had to go through Edison.

So the “independent” film-makers chose an alternate option to fighting Edison: fleeing Edison. And that’s what they did!

They moved to California, to an area of the country where the judges weren’t as friendly to Edison and his patents, and where the wheels of copyright law would take longer to roll over them.