The irony with Edison's lawsuits is that now no Americans control American film studios. Is there any European American owner of a studio?
I think Europeans have been completely removed from the cultural stream and they invented the art form. So much for racial equality rhetoric. Some buys outs, some blackmail and who knows what else. The same thing happened to American theater in 1900. And publishing. Lovecraft and Capote were incensed about that-- greatly offended that some literary voices were prevented from exposure by so-called American book publishers.
The sorry state of film expression today--a big part of the blame does rest with the foreigner studios which came in and sought to take over. They did not want competitors. They had the money and contacts to squeeze out the natives.
I will give Laemmle credit for putting a note at the end of his earliest films asking people to write to him on their opinions of the films. I can't imagine a studio head doing that today.
But the big studios were too controlling. That is why Walt Disney, Orson Welles and others started SIMPP--so they could have more creative freedom than offered with Universal, MGM, Warner Bros, etc.