Ralph Anspach
Quick Facts
Biography
Ralph Anspach (born 1926) is an American retired economics professor from San Francisco State University. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and fought with the Mahal in 1948 in support of the independence of Israel. He is best known, though, for creating the game Anti-Monopoly, and the legal battles that followed.
Life
Ralph Anspach was born in 1926. Anspach grew up in Germany where he belong to Zionist youth groups.
In 1938, he escaped Germany for the US. Anspach was enlisted in the US Army serving from 1945 to 1946 in an artillery observation unit based in the Philippines.
He attended University of Chicago. During college, he heard about concentration camp survivors' problem being shuttled about and not being allow into Palestine. Thus he volunteer, under the cover of being agricultural laborers, to fight in Israel's War of Independence on Israel's side as a part of the Mahal, foreign volunteers. Anspach served it an anti-tank unit.
Amspach created the Anti-Monopoly game which resulted in a 1974 trademark infringement lawsuit brought by Parker Brothers. In 1979, the parties reached a settlement allowing Anspach to continue marketing Anti-Monopoly. In a 1983 US Supreme Court case, Anspach won the "Anti-Monopoly" and the suffix "-opoly" trademark rights from Parker Brothers. He then wrote a book about the true history of monopoly and his legal fight over monopoly, The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle.
Work
- games
- Anti-Monopoly
- Original-opoly
- The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle