The game's name remains a registered trademark of Parker Brothers, as do its specific design elements other elements of the game are still protected under copyright law. Because of the lengthy court process, including appeals, the legal status of Parker Brothers' copyright and trademarks on the game was not settled until 1985.

Through the research of Anspach and others, much of the early history of the game was 'rediscovered' and entered into official United States court records.

Īlso in the 1970s, Professor Ralph Anspach, who had himself published a board game intended to illustrate the principles of both monopolies and trust busting, fought Parker Brothers and its then parent company, General Mills, over the copyright and trademarks of the Monopoly board game.

Even a guide to family games published for Reader's Digest in 2003 gave credit only to Darrow and none to Elizabeth Magie, erroneously stating that Magie's original game was created in the 19th century and not acknowledging any of the game's development between Magie's creation of the game and the eventual publication by Parker Brothers. Several people, mostly in the midwestern United States and near the East Coast of the United States, contributed to design and evolution.īy the 1970s, the idea that the game had been created solely by Charles Darrow had become popular folklore it was printed in the game's instructions for many years, in a 1974 book devoted to Monopoly, and was cited in a general book about toys as recently as 2007. By 1933, a board game had been created much like the modern version of Monopoly sold by Parker Brothers and its related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st. A series of board games was developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of economic rent and the Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value taxation. The earliest known version, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by Elizabeth Magie and first patented in 1904, but existed as early as 1902. The board game Monopoly has its origin in the early 20th century. The five sets of the board game Monopoly depicted here show the evolution of the game's artwork and designs in the United States from 1935 to 2005. For economic term, see Monopoly § Historical monopolies.

Original monopoly board box