Legal Status
Although the game of Monopoly existed before the Parker Brothers edition, the company (now owned by Hasbro) has still claimed intellectual property rights over various aspects of the game, though it has not always prevailed in the courts.
The Anti-Monopoly case mentioned above, in addition to revealing some of the previously suppressed history of the game, also created a doctrine of "purchase motivation", a "test by which the trademark was valid only if consumers, when they asked for a Monopoly game, meant that they wanted Parker Brothers' version...." As a result, the name "Monopoly" entered the public domain, where the naming of games was concerned, and a profusion of non-Parker-Brothers variants were published. However, this doctrine was later eliminated by Congress in a revision of the trademark law, and Parker Brothers/Hasbro now claims trademark rights to the name and its variants, and has asserted it against others such as the publishers of Ghettopoly. Professor Anspach assigned the Anti-Monopoly trademark back to Parker Brothers, and Hasbro now owns it. Anspach's game remains in print, and is distributed and sold by University Games worldwide.
Various patents have existed on the game of Monopoly and its predecessors, such as The Landlord's Game, but all have now expired. The specific graphics of the game board, cards, and pieces are protected by copyright law and trademark law, as is the specific wording of the game's rules.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Board Game Monopoly
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