How a Fight Over a Board Game Monopolized an Economist's Life

[snopes]

Ralph Anspach, an 83-year-old economics professor, spent decades locked in a real-life battle with Monopoly and its corporate owners. The campaign dented his finances, sent him on a nationwide trek for intelligence and sparked a legal case that reached the steps of the Supreme Court.

Prof. Anspach's woes began with a real-life trademark fight for the right to sell his own game, called Anti-Monopoly. Along the way, he says he helped to publicize the little-known origins of the classic American game.

Prof. Anspach flew across the country more than a dozen times to research the game's origins. His logic: If he could prove that Monopoly was widely played as a folk game decades before the Darrow patent, then he could argue that his game didn't infringe on Parker Brothers' trademark.

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