What led to the mass migration of film production from New York and New Jersey to California?

D. W. Griffith's company, Biograph, decided to take advantage of the filmmaker's success and, with other companies, formed the Patent Company. This group existed mainly to tax the movie theaters that showed their films. Future founders of Universal, William Fox and Carl Laemmle, banded together with a group of independent filmmakers and went out to California to escape the restrictions placed upon them by the lawyers of the Patent Company. They even campaigned the government to help restrict the power of the Patent Company, which eventually folded under pressure.