In 1953, a woman named Helen Cooke received the patent for sock monkeys. She sued a man named Stanley Levy because he sold sock monkeys but they were not the same design as hers. Levy contacted the Nelson Knitting Company hoping that they would declare the patent invalid. The company knew that people had been making dolls for the last two years, so they gathered up all the dolls that had been made the past two years so that they could have evidence proving that Helen Cooke should not have the patent. One of the most important pieces of evidence was a testimony and a doll made in February 1951 by a lady named Grace Wingent. She was a resident of Rockford and she had made a doll for her grandson. Helen Cooke settled the case against Stanley Levy when she was shown all the evidence that had been collected against her. She decided to sell the patent to the Nelson Knitting Company for $750. The company also paid other women for the rights to the doll including a woman in Tennessee who was paid $1000. Rockford, Illinois became the "home of the sock monkey."