• Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, October 20, 2009 10:48 AM

The Wall Street Journal used to regularly run fascinating stories like this morning's tale of Ralph Anspach, who battled Hasbro for decades over its allegations that a board game he invented, Anti-Monopoly, infringed on its patent. Mary Pilon reports that the retired 83-year-old economics professor at San Francisco State University claims that the board game's official "legend," as Hasbro calls it, "is a corporate fairy tale."

To wit, Anspach maintains that the game's developer, Charles B. Darrow, actually rejiggered "The Landlord's Game," which was patented in 1904 by a Quaker named Elizabeth Magie who wanted to show the downsides of capitalism. It then purportedly became a widely played folk game.

Pilon weaves the tale of Anspach's guerilla-style ambushes of Monopoly championships 30 years ago -- one of them in cahoots with billionaire Jay Walker, who went on to found Priceline -- as well as legal battles that took him all the way to the Supreme Court.

In the end, Anspach and Hasbro reached a settlement and he licenses the Monopoly name. But as part of the deal, Anspach retains the right to tell his story about the origins of the game. "That is a principle which is not for sale for me," he says.

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »