Parker Bros. Files Lawsuit to Protect Its Monopoly

Parker Bros. is trying to keep El Cajon-based Elusive Dream Marketing Service from passing go and collecting $200.

The Beverly, Mass.-based game manufacturer Tuesday filed a trademark infringement suit in New York against Elusive Dream, which manufactures about 60 Cityopoly board games that, the suit alleges, copy “distinctive elements” of Monopoly, the venerable board game that was introduced in 1935.

Parker Bros.’ suit caught Elusive Dream executives off guard. “We’re totally unaware of it,” Tom Magee, a spokesman for the company, said Tuesday. “We’ve heard nothing about a lawsuit.”

“They just want us out of business,” said Elusive Dream Vice President Arthur Mitchell. “But we plan to fight. . . . We’ve got a little war chest built up.” Mitchell said his company recently won the first round of a similar lawsuit that Parker Bros. filed in Canada.

The suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York seeks an injunction that would prohibit the sale of Cityopoly games--including Big Appleopoly and Atlantaopoly at stores including F. A. O. Schwartz and Saks Fifth Avenue. Parker Bros. is also seeking unspecified monetary damages from Elusive Dreams and stores that sell the games, said Arthur Greenbaum, a New York attorney who represents Parker Bros.

Greenbaum said the Cityopoly games cross the fine line between imitation and duplication. “If someone puts out a game and calls it something else, but adopts all of (Monopoly’s identifying characteristics) we would object to it, as Parker Bros. has here,” Greenbaum said.

Parker Bros. spokeswoman Pat McGovern said the toy manufacturer has been monitoring the Cityopoly board games since early 1989, when San Diego resident Shawn Chapin began marketing board games that were based upon landmarks and streets in San Diego and La Jolla.

“We took over from Shawn about 15 months ago . . . and we’re in 60 cities and three countries now,” Mitchell said.

Times staff writer Bernice Hirabayashi in San Diego contributed to this report.