The First Millionaire Game Inventor: 75 Years of Monopoly®
 |
Written by Gene Quinn President & Founder of IPWatchdog, Inc. Patent Attorney, Reg. No. 44,294 Zies, Widerman & Malek E-mail | Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn Posted: Apr 18, 2010 @ 5:31 pm 
|
|
Charles Darrow, an unemployed salesman, was struggling to support his family during the Great Depression. It was during this time that he claimed to have fondly remembered summers in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and dreamed about being a real estate mogul. These diversions purportedly lead to him formulating what has become the most popular board game of all time – Monopoly®. Friends and family gathered to play the game, enjoying earning and spending large amounts of play money. Darrow felt certain he had a hit on his hands so he contacted Parker Brothers, who initially turned him down, but only after explaining that his game violated some 52 fundamental rules of a board successful game. Thankfully for all those who have played and enjoyed the game over the years, a reported 500 million people, Darrow was not deterred.
 |
 |
Undeterred, Darrow marketed the game himself. As fate would have it, a friend of Sally Barton, the daughter of Park Brothers’ founder, George Parker, bought the game. At the time Mrs. Barton’s husband was the President of Parker Brothers. One thing lead to another and eventually Parker Brothers became convinced that this game, with minor modifications, could be a huge success.
As a result of his invention Darrow became the first millionaire game inventor, thanks to royalty payments. The irony, however, is that Darrow may not have invented the game at all, but rather he may have taken a locally popular game and made only a few changes. By the time Parker Brothers realized that Darrow may not have been the true inventor the game was already a huge success. In order to protect the game and its investment the decision was made to buy up all patents and copyrights on any related game, thereby ensuring the monopoly on Monopoly®.
Thus, the story of Monopoly® provides inspiration to inventors who at first are told no, and for companies who acquire intellectual property rights. The first lesson for inventors is that you can indeed patent a board game. In fact, since 1976 there have been 1,113 US patents issued with “board game” being in the title of the patent itself, and 2,789 patents where “board game” appears somewhere within the patent. Many inventors skip the step of filing a patent application on their board game, which for those that turn out successful will be a mistake. Having patent protection on your board game allows you to prevent others from making, selling, using or importing a game that would infringe your patent. It also would give you an asset to transfer or license if there is enough interest in your game.
For companies, the failure to investigate ownership of an invention prior to licensing or acquiring the rights can be extremely problematic. Many, if not most or even all, large companies will investigate what patents are out there prior to making an offer to acquire a license or acquire the patent itself, thereby not falling into the potential trap faced by Parker Brothers; namely having an enormously successful property without owning all of the associated rights. Due diligence is always appropriate in any business dealing, with the amount of diligence and investigation corresponding to the amount of the investment and potential return. Of course, another good lesson for inventors is that if businesses are going to engage in due diligence prior to acquiring a license or invention rights, shouldn’t you also?
All worked out well for Darrow, but what if he had invested everything in the game, it took off and then others with superior rights were able to stop him in his tracks? This is a cautionary tale for inventors and the fact that Darrow got lucky ought not to be lost. Moving forward without reasonable investigation that a patent search can provide is risky and can find you investing unnecessarily large sums of money in a project that will likely never get off the ground. Thus, it is always wise to start with a good patent search. It is better to spend an appropriate sum investigating on the front end. It will make the patent application better, because you know what to focus on, and if there are real impediments to obtaining a patent you can cut the project before significant sums have been invested.
Some, including comedian Stephen Wright, have joked about how it is ironic that there is a monopoly on Monopoly®. True enough, but the success of the game, now in its 75th year, continues.
Here are some fun facts about Monopoly®:
- The game is licensed in 103 countries and available in 37 languages.
- Foreign editions frequently adopt their own currency and property names.
- World records are maintained for the longest game in a treehouse (286) hours, underground (100 hours), in a bathtub (99 hours) and upside-down (36 hours).
- Over 250 million sets of the Monopoly® game have been sold worldwide.
- The three most-landed-on properties are Illinois Avenue. “GO” and the B&O Railroad.
- More than five billion little green houses have been “built” since 1935.
- The game was popular in Cuba until Fidel Castro came to power. Upon coming to power Castro ordered the destruction of all copies of Monopoly®
For more facts about Monopoly® see: Monopoly History & Fun Facts.
About the Author
 |
Eugene R. Quinn, Jr.
President & Founder of IPWatchdog, Inc. US Patent Attorney (Reg. No. 44,294) Zies, Widerman & Malek B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Rutgers University J.D., Franklin Pierce Law Center L.L.M. in Intellectual Property, Franklin Pierce Law Center Send me an e-mail  |
Gene Quinn is a US Patent Attorney, law professor and the founder of IPWatchdog.com. He is also a principal lecturer in the top patent bar review course in the nation, which helps aspiring patent attorneys and patent agents prepare themselves to pass the patent bar exam. Known by many as “The IPWatchdog,” Gene started the widely popular intellectual property website IPWatchdog.com in 1999, and since that time the site has had millions of unique visitors. Gene has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the LA Times, CNN Money, NPR and various other newspapers and magazines worldwide. He represents individuals, small businesses and start-up corporations. As an electrical engineer with a computer engineering focus his specialty is electronic and computer devices, Internet applications, software and business methods.
Another fun fact – Marvin Gardens is not the correct spelling of that property. It is really Mar-Ven Gardens, so named because it is on the border of two towns, Margate and Ventnor, that are just south of Atlantic City.
Another fun fact:
During World War 2, Allied forces sent monopoly games to soliders imprisoned in POW camps. The games often had secret compartments in the board which contained silk-screened maps, and some of the monopoly money was real money! The Monopoly game escape kits helped many British and US soldiers successfully escape the POW camps. Only years later was the Parker Bros. war effort in Monopoly games declassified.
See the link for example.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/12/05/mf.waropoly/index.html
Gene,
Monopoly was never a fun game for me. Too boring, too much playing out the string when one player gets way ahead, and too much work (I hated calculating what had to be paid when you landed on someone’s property and what you could get from mortgaging properties to pay off that person). I’m more into EuroGames like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride. Also enjoy card games like Bang! and Fluxx. I’m just now getting back into war games (not Risk which is a favorite of my wife) which were a hobby of mine in my youth, and which my patent attorney brother Mark is a huge collector of. (and now the developer of the war game, Bataan!). Something I’d like to do more of when I decide to hang up my IP law spikes.
Gene, have you seen this film about Bilski and the CAFC http://patentabsurdity.com/
BrianK
Anyone know of a patent/IP specific game(s) . . . patent(s) . . . or apps?
Will all the twists and turns in the field/profession, such a game could be at least a large, great-demographics, much-$$$ niche game.
Board reverses examiner, move ahead 5 spaces . . . inequitable conduct, lose one turn . . . prelim injunction granted, opponent on your left must pay you $100,000.
Maybe something along the lines of Life; to better (than a more simplistic Monopoly-type game) represent IP’s greater sophistication.
Steve M.
The one I know of and have is called The Inventors (1974) by Parker Brothers. Pretty shallow “invention” premise but at least its one I know of. You can check it out on BoardGameGeek (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3378/the-inventors ).
Brian-
I have not seen this Bilski film, but based on the text at the website it looks like it is a terrible distortion of the truth. Court didn’t distort patent law to allow for the patenting of software, and that claim on the website suggests that the movie is not really worth watching because of its bias and what will undoubtedly be factual and historical inaccuracies.
What did you think of it?
-Gene
EG-
I am a BIG Risk fan! I know what you mean about Monopoly being a slow play and the fate certain. It is much more fun with house rules that speed it up a bit and when everyone realizes there will be a winner so declare the winner and start new.
-Gene
Thanks, EG.
Took a look at it via your link; seems dated, of course, given the year … but at least it exists/ed.
And I’m w/you regarding Risk; always been one of my favorites.
Steve M.,
Yes, The Inventors is dated but not as much as the Game of Authors (1861): http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11670/the-game-of-authors
I also found another “invention” premise game called “US Patent Number 1″ (2001): http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2297/us-patent-number-1
On Risk, you may be confusing me with Gene’s comment. I don’t find Risk to be a fun game either.
Steve M.
Some more game trivia: One of the early “electronic” boardgames was Dark Tower (1981): http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30/dark-tower Amazingly, we still have a “working” version (at least the last time we played it which was a few years ago) which is considered quite rare. I just saw one being offerred for the price of $335.99 (orginally, it cost around $40). There’s a huge market in second hand board games, especially those that are now out of print.
EG; thanks for the additional games info; great stuff.
And sorry about the “likes Risk” mix up.
Steve M.
Not a problem. In fact, there’s a new version of Risk out that might make it tolerable for me (including taking only 90 minutes to play).
What’s interesting is that when I started to doing prep and pros, a number of my early patent applications involved toys/games (my other area of early application drafting was agricultural equipment). I’m an undergraduate chemist but mechanical stuff doesn’t faze me in the least. Doing patent applications on toys/games (and even agricultural equipment) was fun to do.
Those who are involved in board games normally do it as a hobby. There are few very well known game designers who do make it more than a hobby. Those include Alan Moon (designer of Ticket to Ride and many others), Klaus Teuber (designer of the highly successful Settlers of Catan series), and Reiner Knizia (designer of Tigris & Eurphrates among others). If you want to know the fascinating story on Settlers of Catan which basically set off the whole EuroGames craze, check out: http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/17-04/mf_settlers
War games are even more a hobby area. Some of the notable designers include Vance von Borries (my brother Mark was a developer for his Bataan! game which I was a playtester for), Richard Berg (a legend in this field), Mark Herman (the High Master of card driven war games which I favor), and Ted Racier (he has several in the World War I era which I also favor). The map art for these games is something to behold.
Patents tend not to be the way to protect board games. Instead, IP protection tends to be based on copyright, and sometimes trademark. Most of the game rules are freely shared by the designer/developer, and there’s even a huge amount of play by e-mail (PBEM) , including tournaments, using modules based on CyberBoard, VASSAL, and ACTS (I’m only familiar with CyberBoard and VASSAL).
Lots of fun for spending your free time, at least in my opinion. I never could get into video games (call me “video game-challenged”).
Thanks for the additional games info; fascinating stuff to someone like myself who’s always liked board games.
Did read that wired article when it came out. Impressive accomplishment indeed.
And like you, just never been interested in video games.
Steve M.
Glad you enjoyed the additional information. My younger patent attorney brother Mark is the true “board game geek” in our family. I’m simply a participant in this hobby.
Yeah, I never could get into video games. Computer games yes (including some like Railroad Tycoon that were later turned into board games), but video games no.
Amazing article. For decades now I have been playing Monopoly. I still love it to this day. Nothing brings the family together like a good Monopoly session
Stephen,
EuroGames like Settlers of Catan are a lot more “family-friendly” than Monopoly, and quite a bit shorter.