Anti-Monopoly is a board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 made by San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...

 Professor Ralph Anspach

Ralph Anspach

Ralph Anspach is a retired American economics professor from San Francisco State University. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and fought with the Machal in 1948 in support of the independence of Israel. He is best known, though, for creating the game Anti-Monopoly, which resulted in...

, in response to Monopoly

Monopoly (game)

Marvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board shown, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, Marven Gardens. The misspelling was said to be introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made Monopoly board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence to Parker...

. The game was originally to be produced in 1973 as Bust the Trust but the title was changed to Anti-Monopoly.

Gameplay

Anspach created Anti-Monopoly in part as a response to the "lessons" taught by the mainstream game, which he believed created the impression that monopolies

Monopoly

A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...

 were something desirable. His intent was to demonstrate how harmful monopolies could be to a free-enterprise system, and how antitrust

Antitrust

The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...

 laws work to curtail them in the real world.

The original Anti-Monopoly game begins with the board in a "monopolized" state, effectively the "result" of a completed Monopoly game. Instead of real estate and public utilities, "properties" in Anti-Monopoly are individual businesses that have been brought under single ownership. Players take the role of federal "case workers" bringing indictments against each monopolized business in an attempt to return the state of the board to a free market

Free market

A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...

 system.

The game has seen multiple printings and revisions since 1973. In 1984, a new version appeared as Anti-Monopoly II, in which individual players choose to play either by "monopolist" or "competititor" rules at the beginning of the game. (This version plays more like the actual Monopoly game in that it is based on the buying and selling of real estate.) Among other differences, competitors charge lower rents and can improve any property they own at any time, while monopolists must own at least two properties in a group before building houses on them and charge much higher rents. The Anti-Monopoly II version was updated and rereleased in 2005 without the numerical designation.

Trademark lawsuit

In 1974, Parker Brothers sued Anspach over the use of the "Monopoly" name, claiming trademark infringement. While preparing his legal defense, Anspach became aware of Monopolys history prior to Charles Darrow

Charles Darrow

Charles Brace Darrow was born in Philadelphia; he is best known as the purported inventor of the Monopoly board game. Darrow was a domestic heater salesman from Germantown, a neighborhood in Philadelphia during the Great Depression. The house he lived in still stands at 40 Westview Street...

's sale of the game to Parker in 1935, and how it had evolved from Elizabeth Magie

Elizabeth Magie

Elizabeth "Lizzie" J. Phillips née Magie was an American game designer. She invented The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly.-Early life:...

's original Landlord's Game

The Landlord's Game

The Landlord's Game is a board game patented in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie as . It is a realty and taxation game, which is considered to be a direct inspiration for the board game Monopoly...

 into the version Darrow appropriated. Anspach based his defense on the grounds that the game itself existed in effectively the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

 before Parker purchased it, and therefore Parker's trademark claim on it should be nullified. The case dragged on for several years, with numerous appeals and overturned judicial verdicts, until Anspach and Parker ultimately reached a settlement, permitting him to continue using the name Anti-Monopoly and distributing the game.

The game is currently in print, and is produced and distributed worldwide by University Games.

Related games

A similar game (in that it inverts the objective of Monopoly, but with the aim of giving away money and property) was described/invented by science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 author Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...

. Selchow & Righter published the game Go for Broke in 1965.

In Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, where the original game was and is very popular, two more versions of Anti-Monopoly were created and popular in the late 1970s and 1980s: Provopoli - Wem gehört die Stadt, where squatters take over parts of the town, and Ökopoli where the objective is to take over the town from polluters.

External links

• Anti-Monopoly Home Page
• Anti-Monopoly on University Games' website
• Go to Court, Go Directly to Court - article from the Washington Free Press
• How a Fight Over a Board Game Monopolized an Economist's Life, Wall Street Journal