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To lazy to look it up, but i think it's Hasbro who owns the rights? So Hasbro has a monopoly on Monopoly. Monopoly in itself is not a brand.

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Masterminds at Hasbro have Monopoly on Life, the Game of. Get a Clue.

Sorry! They Acquire so many high Risk boardgames like Magic. It Scabbles my ability to comment with any Diplomacy I might Boggle.brain gets Crossfired, Buckaroo.

D&D

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I'm not sure if that is actually true. Have you ever noticed that sometimes a game is called like Monopoly Cats, versus Cat-opoly?

I'm pretty sure Hasbro only owns the rights on the Monopoly name, and other companies can make their own unlicensed game if they change the names and fonts just enough.

It's also not really a monopoly to have your own unique game.

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The gameplay/concept would remain the same, and they can easily get caught out that way.

By that logic, Coca cola has a monopoly on the product referred to as Coke.

well.. ish. You cannot copyright rules of a game. the name "Monopoly" is trademarked, just like the monopoly man, so no one can make a game called monopoly. so in that way, you are right.

but anyone could make a game that works 100% exactly the same as monopoly. you have to make sure you dont break copyright on anything. so they would have to name it something else, give all the spaces different names, design a new board and write their own version of the rule book, that describes the rules exactly the same, BUT you could make the exact same game, with a different name.

It literally doesn't. People can freely reproduce near copies of Monopoly. (Long story why.) As long as the games don't use the actual visual assets or the exact written rules, I think they're okay. Hence we have many souvenir versions of Monopoly.

but thing is that there exists no relevant game like Monopoly, hense why we could say hasbro has a monopoly over monopoly

Several of the key copyright-able aspects of the game have had those copyrights expired and the main mechanics are now in the public domain which is why you saw an explosion of "(noun)-opoly" clones hit the market all at the same time. Hasbro owns "Monopoly" and "Rich Uncle Pennybags" but no longer a square board with 11 spaces per side with properties for sale where players can charge rent once they purchase.

You can find plenty of knock off *-opoly games on store shelves. You can even order a custom one

Can confirm. I used to be gifted all sorts of knockoff -opoly games as a kid, even though I hated playing monopoly

I remember playing a board game named Millionaires game. Think it was a knock off of monopoly. Does it count as a competition?

You tried.

And YOU must be the Monopoly guy.

Hey

Thanks for the free parking.