Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE:HAS) has finally purchased all of the intellectual property rights related to the Trivial Pursuit brand from Horn Abbot Ltd. and from Horn Abbot International Ltd. Hasbro paid out an aggregate purchase price of some $80 million to the Horn Abbot companies for the intellectual property rights.
This isn’t going to change much about the game itself, but now Hasbro will get to keep everything from the gross sales of the Trivial Pursuit games. Hasbro has developed and marketed Trivial Pursuit under a license agreement from the Horn Abbot companies since 1983. If you trust the Wikipedia numbers, 88 million copies had sold in 17 languages as of 2004.
You should try playing Trivial Pursuit in Spanish against Spaniards who won’t let you translate anything besides the Spanish you know… and then winning.
This won’t change much about the game itself, although now Hasbro can take it any direction it wants with more offshoots than it already has and can keep all of the pie pieces.
Jon C. Ogg
March 31, 2008
Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter and he can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.
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