Vindicated by the courts, Anti-Monopoly re-entered the market in 1984 with an entirely new game, also called Anti-Monopoly, which was a patented upgrade of Monopoly with an anti-monopolistic theme. It sold 200,000 copies. But then, Hasbro bought out most of the competition, including Parker Brothers and Monopoly, and took over more than seventy per cent of the board game market in which Monopoly and Anti-Monopoly compete directly with each other. Suddenly, the sales of Anti-Monopoly plummeted -- though it is still being sold by Talicor.

Anti-Monopoly once again fought back. It filed an antimonopoly lawsuit against Hasbro in the hope of returning the board game market back to free competition. With Carl Person (www.lawmall.com), the same lawyer who had led it to victory before, the little company is confronting the second biggest toy and game behemoth in the world, defended by two law firms which rank 1st and 37th in size nationally. But our chances of winning this time are small because, sadly enough, a pro-monopoly bias has dominated our courts in recent years.

Fortunately, the nation, watching Microsoft's attack on Netscape, is waking up to the growing danger of big business monopolism and the legal winds are shifting. But Anti-Monopoly may have brought its suit too early to benefit from this development. It already lost in the lower courts through summary judgments which deprived it of a jury trial. Anti-Monopoly is now making its last stand at the Supreme Court level. What are our chances? Anti-Monopoly can't say because Hasbro has concealed its predatory practices behind a curtain of "Confidential - For Attorneys Eyes Only" designations. It reminds one of the concealment of the history of Monopoly by Parker Brothers.

Anti-Monopoly is fighting back on this iron curtain tactic also. It is now trying to get the United States Supreme Court to open up to public view the techniques used by Hasbro to get rid of competition. In our case, this is especially important because the "confidentiality" ploy broke up the team of Anti-Monopoly's President, Ralph Anspach, a specialist in antitrust economics and law and economics and Carl Person, the brilliant attorney who loves to take on the big interests. This was the team which won the first litigation. But this time, Anspach was prevented from even seeing the legal briefs written by Carl Person after researching Hasbro's activities. In effect, Anti-Monopoly was deprived of its constitutional right to consult with its attorney. Anti-Monopoly was playing Monopoly blindfolded.

But Anti-Monopoly will fight on regardless of what happens in the lawsuit. It is steering Anti-Monopoly onto the electronic highway which is still open to competition. It is turning the Anti-Monopoly game into a PC game and, on the same software, it will also be offering the stolen Atlantic City monopoly game under the title Authentic-Opoly. Buyers will be able to play both games for the price of one.

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