History of the board game Monopoly general book about toys even as recently as 2007. Even a guide to family games published for "Reader's Digest" in 2003 only gave credit to Darrow and 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. Also 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
History of the board game Monopoly sole inventor of the game, but sought out an affidavit by Darrow to repeat his statements to the contrary, and thus bolster their claim to the game. Parker Brothers subsequently decided to buy out Magie's 1924 patent and the copyrights of other commercial variants of the game to claim that it had legitimate undisputed rights to the game. Robert Barton, president of Parker Brothers, bought the rights to "Finance" from Knapp Electric later in 1935. "Finance" would be redeveloped, updated, and continued to be sold by Parker Brothers into the 1970s. Other board games based on a similar principle, such