![]() ![]() One of those names included Bill Markham.Īfter Klamer finished his testimony, the court heard from Grace Falco Chambers, a former artist who worked at Markham’s company California Product Development. Klamer also wrote down names of artists and others who might work on a prototype. He employed a spinner used to move players across the circuitous board instead of dice, since Milton Bradley wanted to avoid any comparison to gambling. He testified the notes were to synthesize his ideas of the game, which wanted to be different from “Monopoly” so he avoided a round track. She asked him to review the notes he made on the flight home after that first meeting with Milton Bradley in 1959. His and Hasbro’s attorney, Patty Glaser of Glaser Weil, asked who invented “The Game of Life.” “The name of the game thrilled me,” he said. “I wanted to create an adult game – a family game.” He said he found a game idea in the archives called “The Checkered Game of Life.” “I had an idea the next morning after I visited the archives” at Milton Bradley, Klamer testified. The 95-year-old said he was inspired to create a board game that did not have a track around the board and did not use dice. Klamer testified he was approached by Milton Bradley in 1959 to create a board game celebrating the toy company’s 100th anniversary. ![]() ![]() District Judge William Smith, who ordered a bench trial due to the advanced ages of the witnesses. Three other witnesses also testified before U.S. This past week, Klamer took the witness stand to explain how he created the board game. She seeks a declaration her husband is the sole creator of “The Game of Life,” and the right to terminate all agreements and to future royalties. She says Hasbro – which took over Milton Bradley in 1984 – stopped putting her husband’s royalties into an escrow account. Markham’s widow claims her husband did not receive royalties from Hasbro for his contribution to the game, which she pegs at more than $2 million. Lorraine Markham claims in a lawsuit filed in 2015 that her late husband Bill took an idea presented by another toy inventer, Reuben Klamer, and created a far different board game that we know now as “The Game of Life.”īut Markham has been cut out of receiving royalties from the game, his widow’s attorney Robert Pollaro with Codwalader, Wickersham & Taft told a judge during a bench trial going on now in LA federal court. LOS ANGELES (CN) – A germ of an idea that turned into the popular “The Game of Life” board game has taken center stage in a federal courtroom, in the trial of a lawsuit brought by a toy inventor’s widow who says her husband is the sole copyright owner. ![]()
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