No Monopoly on Localized Parodies of Borrowed Idea
It was better than passing GO and collecting $200. When fledgling entrepreneur Shawn Chapin decided to market a knockoff of the famous board game Monopoly, basing her version on the community of La Jolla, she hit it big.
Dubbed La Jollaopoly, the game was an instant success in department stores and boutiques throughout the trendy burg, prompting Chapin to produce a spinoff, San Diegoopoly, and launch plans for similar games based on municipalities across the country.
All too quickly, however, Chapin’s idea ran aground. Not only is there no monopoly on Monopoly, but there seems to be no monopoly on her takeoff, either.
As the budding businesswoman tells it, an acquaintance pilfered the concept and created Newportopoly, basing it on the fashionable Orange County city of Newport Beach. To top it off, Chapin and her rival are now engaged in a veritable battle of the board games, vying to produce the first San Franciscoopoly.
Parker Brothers Casting a Wary Eye
You thought just playing the game was nerve racking? There’s more. Now the gaming goliath that markets Monopoly, Parker Brothers, is eyeing the new games, eager to ensure that their copyright and trademark privileges are not trampled by the parodies.
All of the hubbub has Chapin aghast. A concept that once appeared so promising and fun now seems about as charming as the card that reads, “Go directly to jail.”
“I’ve been a nervous wreck the last two weeks,” said Chapin, who formed La Jolla-based Cityopoly to market the board games. “When I started with this, it was such a great thing. I enjoyed what I was doing. But all this puts a bad taste in my mouth.”
A longtime San Diego resident, Chapin was a saleswoman in the boy’s department at a local Nordstrom when she decided last year to market La Jollaopoly.
The 27-year-old entrepreneur got the idea from a friend in Maui, who produced and sold Mauiopoly when Chapin was living in the islands a few years back.
What better place for the game, she figured, than La Jolla? Chapin has been a regular at Windansea Beach for years and spends much of her time hanging out with friends in La Jolla, which she considers one of the finer spots on Earth.
Last April, she quit her job and began working full-time on the game. Her first task was to sell spots on the board to local businesses, using the funds as seed money to manufacture the game.
Instead of real estate like Boardwalk or Park Place, Chapin’s games feature the name and logo of bars, restaurants and hotels. Houses and hotels are called kiosks and emporiums, chance is now “Surprise!” and players can draw a card to win the state lottery instead of free parking.
Though friends and family were skeptical about the game’s chances, Chapin managed to sell every spot on the board, $275 a space, within a month. The game came out in August, and all 700 “went like hot cakes,” Chapin said.
Not one to rest on her laurels, the up-and-coming capitalist upgraded La Jollaopoly to include more color graphics on the box and game board. She also concocted the San Diego game and another based on Birmingham, Mich., a trendy enclave near the home base of her original board manufacturer.
The three games hit the shelves in their respective cities just before Christmas and recorded impressive sales, with more than 10,000 going out the door at about $20 a game. Among the stores that carried the games were Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue.
“There was a phenomenal response to it,” said Pat Veikos, general manager of Saks in La Jolla. “We were taken aback at how well it sold
through the Christmas holiday. We’re just thrilled with the results.”
To Chapin, the future seemed limitless.
She began to lay out plans to expand her empire to new cities--Del Mar, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco. She had sweat shirts made and framed versions of the board as gifts for businesses. She began dreaming about opening a restaurant in La Jolla to be named, fittingly enough, Cityopoly. The nightspot would feature tables made of game boards from the municipalities she planned to conquer.
Then trouble hit.
Acquaintance Makes Move
Late last year, Chapin learned that an acquaintance, Lacy Johnston, had formed a company with her boyfriend, Geoffrey Airey, to market Newportopoly.
Chapin immediately cried foul. As she tells it, Johnston called her to congratulate her on the success of La Jollaopoly. Chapin contends that Johnston “pumped me for information” about the game and expressed interest in producing one of her own.
Aghast, Chapin said she urged Johnston to come in under her wing to market Newportopoly. But, when Chapin returned from a weeklong trip to the East Coast, she discovered that the pair had gone ahead on their own, selling advertising spaces on the board to merchants in Newport Beach. Moreover, they used La Jollaopoly to convince the businesses to sign up, Chapin contends.
“The fact is they took my game and used it,” Chapin said. “It’s like going behind someone’s back.”
Johnston refused to comment on Chapin’s charges, saying her rival has “blown this whole thing out of proportion.”
“If that’s the way she likes to do things, great,” Johnston said. “I think it’s almost ridiculous for me to have to respond to some of those comments.”
The battle didn’t end, shifting instead to new turf. At the start of the year, both Chapin and Johnston set their sights on San Francisco. A race was on to see which firm could produce first.
Johnston is upbeat about her game, saying she is “incorporating a lot of different ideas” she hopes will make it “do justice to the city.”
Chapin, however, contends that Johnston and Airey are trying to undercut her efforts in San Francisco. She alleges that sales people for their firm, G&L; Enterprises of Laguna Beach, have called merchants and attempted to persuade them to drop off the Cityopoly board.
Indeed, some bizarre tales are making the rounds.
One recent morning, officials at Spectrum Foods, a San Francisco restaurant conglomerate that purchased two spaces on the Cityopoly board, got a call from someone claiming to be from a local radio station. The caller, who identified himself as Brook Graham, said Spectrum should drop its support for the board because Parker Brothers had an injunction pending against the Cityopoly game.
Officials with Spectrum checked back with the radio station and learned that, in fact, there is no Brook Graham working there. Moreover, when they inquired with Parker Brothers, the firm’s counsel said that, although the Cityopoly game is being reviewed, no legal action is pending.
“We don’t know who these people are, but all we can guess is that someone is trying to undercut Cityopoly,” said Pat Boomer, marketing manager with Spectrum Foods, which owns 15 restaurants in the Bay Area and Southern California. “What’s funny is it all seems so underhanded for something that’s not that big a deal.”
The story has Chapin fuming, convinced that Johnston and Airey are behind the phone calls. Johnston again declined to comment on the charges, other than to say that Chapin’s allegations are “untruthful.”
Meanwhile, attorneys for Parker Brothers are looking at the products of the two firms.
Steven Weinberg, a Manhattan lawyer who represents the games giant, hinted that it is only a matter of time before the Beverly, Mass., firm takes some sort of action against one or both of the companies.
The parodies “borrow from the good will that Monopoly has earned,” Weinberg said, and potentially violate copyright and trademark laws protecting the original wheeler-dealer board game from imitators.
He said the parodies on Monopoly, which is based on streets and real estate in Atlantic City, N.J., are nothing new. About 20 cities across the country have produced personalized real-estate board games, often to raise money for local civic groups. Moreover, many other groups have tried to market knockoffs similar to La Jollaopoly and Newportopoly.
Indeed, company officials say, they get calls every day from people telling them about the knockoffs. Weinberg said most of the calls are from Monopoly aficionados irked that the grand old game, which was invented in the midst of the Great Depression and is now played throughout the world, was being sullied by imitators.
If the parodies appear too similar to Monopoly, Parker Brothers usually asks that they be modified, Weinberg said. If the copycats refuse, the company sues, he said.
“We’ve had a good number of infringing activities through the years,” Weinberg said. “When we find out about them, we try to stop them. We’ve been successful in every case.”
Chapin as well as Airey and Johnston insist that their games are sufficiently different from the original Monopoly to skirt legal problems.
“Throughout this whole process we’ve covered ourselves with legal advice,” Johnston said. “The game coming out in San Francisco is not like Monopoly at all. They’re extremely different.”
Chapin also claimed to be on solid legal ground, arguing that her product is little more than the gaming equivalent of a song that parodies a hit record.
“They created a great thing with Monopoly, but people identify with this game because it’s based on their own town,” Chapin said. “I’m going to stand up for my business. This is my career. . . . You’ve got to take a chance in life, and I’m going to go for it.”
