Using the 'opoloy' suffix in my board game name.

My guess is you can't. The reason why I think that is for the exact reason why you want to call it ****-opoly. You want to capitalize on their brand name. People who love their game will hopefully love your game. I think they would be able to argue that the name is confusing to people because they will think the two games are related and hence, someone might not buy their game and buy yours instead. And that's when I think the courts pile on the money.

Good luck finding the right name, Lar

I've seen Ghettopoly and Thugopoly for sale a while ago. I don't know if they had to pay royalties to the Monopoly people for using a name like that.

You can do what you want. If you chose to create a game that gets on Hasbro's radar as a violation, they WILL sue you, and it WILL cost you money to fight it. Thugopoly was sued by Hasbro. They lost.

MONOPOLY®, THE DISTINCTIVE DESIGN OF THE GAME BOARD, THE FOUR CORNER SQUARES, AS WELL AS EACH OF THE DISTINCTIVE ELEMENTS OF THE BOARD AND THE PLAYING PIECES ARE TRADEMARKS OF HASBRO, INC. FOR ITS REAL ESTATE TRADING GAME AND GAME EQUIPMENT. ©1935, 1936, 1947, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1961, 1973, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 HASBRO, INC.

This is their most profitable asset, and they protect it well.

Ali, your quote above lists trademarks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark), which are altogether different than Patents or Copyrights.

Here again is some more information about the Monopoly intellectual property:

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121997.htm
http://www.antimonopoly.com/the_full_story.html

If Thugopoly was sued by Hasbro, then why is it's publisher (http://www.ghettopoly.com/) still producing more and more -opoly variants? I'm making assumptions here, but if they were sued by Hasbro, I doubt that the company would exist, much less continuing to make more variants. Can you post proof that the makers of Thugopoly were actually sued?

Again, I stand behind my initial post, don't make any judgement based upon assumptions alone. Consult an Intellectual Property lawyer. If you can't do that, contact the makers of Ghettopoly or Antimonopoly and get their spin on it. Just don't let presumptions make your decision for you. Find out the facts.

-Darke